Value

I went for a walk in the evening. Halfway through, the road got dusty. A few vehicles had just passed and the air got dusty, so I sat down on a bench to let it settle.

In front of me was a building, and on one of the terraces a child was playing. I couldn’t see him properly, only the silhouette of his head and hands. He was running around, stopping, starting again, completely inside his own little moment.

While I was sitting there, something hit me. For him to be able to play like this, someone somewhere is working. Someone built that house. Someone is paying for that space. Someone is putting food on the table. Someone is carrying responsibilities he doesn’t even know exist. 

Around the same time, I remembered a conversation from earlier that day. A friend was venting to me about someone he knows. A man around thirty. Educated with a master’s degree. But he has never really worked. Not even for a short time. He’s drifting through life, avoiding the conversations about his work completely.

I’m not judging him. To each, their own! But sitting on that bench, that conversation suddenly felt heavier. We speak a lot today about being valued. About being respected, understood, supported. But we rarely talk about where value actually comes from.

Value doesn’t appear out of thin air. It has to be given first. Before comfort, someone puts in effort. Before freedom, someone makes sacrifices. Even love, when you look closely, is carried by things like time, presence, care, stability, and showing up again and again.

Life runs on what we put into it. You can be loved for who you are, maybe by others. But self worth doesn’t come from that validation. It doesn’t come from compliments. It comes from knowing you were useful today. That you carried something. That you added something, even if nobody saw it. That changes how you sit with yourself. How you sleep. How you move through the world.

That child on the terrace is living on the value someone else provided right now. So he can play. So he can be careless. So he can just be. But he won’t always be on that terrace. Someday, without even realizing, he will cross over to the other side of life. He will pick up the mantle for the future generations. 

In Marathi, we have a saying that perfectly describe this – 

“देणाऱ्याने देत जावे,
घेणाऱ्याने घेत जावे,
घेता घेता एक दिवस
देणाऱ्याचे हात घ्यावे.”