Trash and treasure

There will be people who treat you like trash and people who treasure you, but how you treat yourself determines your value. This is even more important when it comes to your life’s vision. Some people might see the vision you have for your life as trash and some might see it as treasure, but what you think of it has the most power in influencing how and where you end up.

An incident taught me this lesson. I’ve always had an inclination to write my thoughts and feelings down, in order to express myself or to make sense of things. One day, someone trashed my writing and told me to stop wasting my time writing “useless thoughts” down. Initially, I was hurt by it, but then I had an epiphany when some people treasured the same work and appreciated it. That’s when the common saying “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” came to mind.

Another incident added another dimension to the lesson. This time, I had shared my life’s vision with someone and they trashed it in the most humiliating abandonment I had ever endured.

When you share your life’s vision with someone and he or she sees it as worthless, it exposes your differences. These insults on your life’s vision are road maps needed to reach your goal. Seeing how far someone is lost from your vision gives you a sense of direction and distance, in the way that someone’s fall gives you a sense of how high you are, or in the way that right needs left for it to be right.