Self-reflections

My sister's going through a really rough patch lately, and she has been coming home every day with a black face and a bad mood. On some extremely bad days, she'll get into crying fits. The family is worried, and we've been talking to her; but I guess resolving personal issues take time, and she probably needs all the time she needs. Coming away from seeing her like that, I finally realise now what self-worth really means. Yeah, I've taken Personality and Social Psychology and all, and I know what it means in the theoretical, academic sense, but the personal meaning of it has only become clear recently.

In a tiny nutshell, my sister's issues are basically about her sense of self-worth as a person. From my perspective, her problem may be that she basically lets everyone else define that for her. Sure, everyone needs to have friends and family assure that you are a good and wonderful person, so what's wrong with that, one may ask. I guess the problem comes when one overrelies on external affirmation, such that it becomes the key source of information about your worth as a human being. The danger in that is, because you can't possibly please everyone, you're probably going to have a hard time living up to your externally-constructed self. I guess the lesson to take home is that everyone needs to feel affirmed, and worthy as person, but ultimately, no one can give you that affirmation except yourself. There's got to be a reason why it's called 'self' worth.

It probably takes a certain level of maturity--emotional, intellectual, etc--to be able to continually give yourself that sense of affirmation, in spite of the instances when shit happens. I guess that is why researchers find a 'self-worth' component either missing or not-so-salient in very young children. I cannot claim to be mature enough to define my own self-worth, but this is a continuing process, and one can only get better with practice. If it takes me forever, so be it. After all, growing up takes a lifetime.