WHAT IS YOUR WORTH?
We live in a youth driven world. How young a person looks is important to most of the world. How much do you weigh? Are you beautiful? Do you have perfect eyebrows, perfect skin, beautifully coiffed hair? Are your nails done? We have Vietnamese people who do our nails. Chinese people who give massages. Hair in ONLY the right places. It is so important to have long luxurious hair but GOD FORBID its in the wrong places. So we shave, wax, tweeze, etc. etc. etc.
Then I began to wonder how much are we worth? As a person, a being, a soul. I am referring to our minds, our education, our knowledge. How much have we as people spent on educating ourselves in the field or fields we aspire to be knowledgeable about. What does that look like? How much does that make us worth?
So my question to you is...not in dollars and cents but in the amount of time you have spent becoming knowledgeable. What are you worth?
I started life in gymnastics at 5 until I was 13. So 9 years learning to tumble, do balance beam, floor ex, uneven parallel bars, the vault and dance. 9 years every morning, gym class and after school practicing. Traveling to meets, taking classes to become a better gymnast. Funny thing is no one asked me if I wanted to be a gymnast.
So then I became a dancer. I learned classical ballet (Chechetti, Vaganova, Russian, American Ballet style, English style), jazz, tumbling, tap, flamenco, modern with a smattering of ballroom, African and Irish. I was a dedicated dancer from the time I was 13 until I retired at 34. Then I was a ballet teacher. I choreographed musicals. And I danced post retirement in a liturgical ballet company. So including the years before I became a dedicated dancer when I still was taking dance class for gymnastics, and after retirement teaching, choreographing and still dancing at 48...26 years as a dedicated dancer and 14 more as a retired teaching choreographing dancer. All total 40 years.
During my dancing days I also became a legal secretary which had schooling all its own. And years of on the job training. I worked in legal from 1975 until 2015, so for 40 years.
Also during my college years, with my major being teaching dance, I also took numerous acting and singing classes. I was a triple threat. Dancing acting singing. College through retirement. So 27 years.
Being a dancer means you never stop training. Always taking classes. Always keeping your body in shape. It was an art form and also an athletic endeavor.
After my dancing days and my legal secretary days I began my journey as a shaman healer. I have taken years of medicine circle training, mediumship training, ICRT Reiki training, Hawaiian lomi lomi training, DoTerra essential oils training, akashic records training and most recently Claim Your Life training. I have traveled thousands of miles to receive training and spent thousands of dollars to take classes. England, Hawaii and all over the continential US.
In addition to all the training I have received and all the money spent on travel and hotel rooms and meals and taxis and buses. I have also spent countless dollars on items of clothing (dance leotards and tights, warm ups, shoes (pointe shoes, ballet shoes, jazz shoes tap shoes, etc), not to mention the books for schooling in college.
And in my current profession the books, workbooks, papers, crystals, candles, and the herbs -- cedar, sage, sweetgrass just to name a few that I use to burn for my healings.
So with all my training and all my knowledge what does that make me worth? Am I more than my training? Am I more than my knowledge? There is a golden age you get when no matter how much you know, no matter how much knowledge you are amassed you are too old to work according to our work force guidelines. Retirement age is 62-67 or 68 depending on who you talk too. No matter how much you know you cannot get a new job at 62 or 63.
Interesting huh? So what do you do with all that knowledge you have amassed. We as 60 somethings have more knowledge amassed within us than most of the rest of the world.
So what do you do? Do you find something else to do?
Welcome to WalMart!
Do you teach? Good luck trying to get a teaching job at my age. Do you write a book? Do you play golf? Tell me why do we not honor the people who know more than we do? Why do we want them to go away and just be nice docile old people? My age group friends call us Elders in Training. We are still young enough to do stuff but too old to begin again.
I am lucky. I found a new journey before retirement age. I will be a healer until the day I die. But what about everyone else? What do you do when all you have done is what you aspired to at age 20 something? What about if you got out of college went into your field and now you are 60 something and are at retirement age? What do you do?
What is your knowledge, soul, spirit worth?
