Status Worthy Quotes

Greek customs such as wine drinking were regarded as worthy of imitation by other cultures. So the ships that carried Greek wine were carrying Greek civilization, distributing it around the Mediterranean and beyond, one amphora at a time. Wine displaced beer to become the most civilized and sophisticated of drinks—a status it has maintained ever since, thanks to its association with the intellectual achievements of Ancient Greece.

My weakness for sympathizing with others has much to do with my status as a bastard, which is not to say that being a bastard naturally predisposes one to sympathy. Many bastards behave like bastards, and I credit my gentle mother with teaching me the idea that blurring the lines between us and them can be a worthy behavior.

If where you are is worthwhile then where you are from doesn't matter.

The fallacy of the socialists lies in supposing that because in the present stage of European society property as a source of power is predominant, the same is true of India, or the same was true of Europe in the past. Religion, social status, and property are all sources of power and authority which one man has to control the liberty of another. One is predominant at one stage; the other is predominant at another stage. That is the only difference. If liberty is the ideal, and if liberty means the destruction of the dominion which one man holds over another, then obviously it cannot be insisted upon that economic reform must be the one kind of reform worthy of pursuit. If the source of power and dominion is, at any given time or in any given society, social and religious, then social reform and religious reform must be accepted as the necessary sort of reform.

Bullying is about judging. It’s about establishing who is more worthy or important. The more powerful kids judge the less powerful kids. They judge them to be less valuable human beings, and they rub their faces in it on a daily basis. Like the boys in Sheri Levy’s study, they get a boost in self-esteem. It’s not that bullies are low in self-esteem, but judging and demanding others can give them a self-esteeem rush. Bullies also gain social status from their actions. Others may look up to them and judge them to be cool, powerful, or funny. Or may fear them. Either way, they’ve upped their standing.

I wonder how many people have died driving while checking how many likes their Facebook status got. I wonder how much life has been lost in the bloody ditch of approval, how many skulls have swallowed windshields trying to see if they are worthy of applause, worthy of their own heart's hungry beat.

She’d never had feelings about any man that were important enough to be real romantic love. Affection, lust, yes those things. Instants in time with someone that had touched her, yes that too. But she found no one for romance that she could look up to, that was real , an individual that wasn’t made up of bits and pieces of clichés, buffeted about on the tide of their wants and the opinions of others, no goal, no point of view that they understood themselves why they held it. She had researched him when she was assigned to protect him, she told him. She had not understood in the beginning. “You were a man that had it all! Worthy and courageous military action; you grew up, came of age in war. A successful career, status in letters, a full professorship at a prestigious university if you wanted it. Accrued wealth and income enough to live however you wanted. Beautiful women in your life … you do not show the full measure of your years in either looks or fitness. “You were a full fledged member of the oligarchy, though at a modest level. Yet you threw it all away! You started your novel, became a thorn in the side of the establishment,” she told him. “I didn’t understand until I read the fragment of manuscript that you had Jean Augereau print out for you. You were on a crusade … totally focused! I saw that you were something special then,” she told him, “That’s when you began to become very special to me!

If your work is worthy enough to carry your name, you may not need a child to carry your name.

Men with merit need to be rewarded, but men without merit need not be insulted.

Stripping the rich of their plumage is undiluted disgrace. The poor who were at their service are now opportune to smear their plummeted status.

I’m convinced that this crowd was made up of people who were, as my sister would say, “dog-tired of second-class citizenship,” of being made to feel less than a human being worthy of respect. When one is feeling this way, anyone who spoke with passion, whose words and spirit challenged the status quo, would be applauded. A clearer, more focused response would come from being in action and experiencing—feeling—a certain energy and response from one with whom one is interacting. In other words, one has to be open to the truth that at some level we are all the same and want the same things, like a peaceful community in which to live and grow and thrive.

It is necessary for the oppressors to approach the people in order, via subjugation, to keep them passive. This approximation, however, does not involve being with the people, or require true communication. It is accomplished by the oppressors' depositing myths indispensable to the preservation of the status quo: for example, the myth that the oppressive order is a "free society"; the myth that all persons are free to work where they wish, that if they don't like their boss they can leave him and look for another job; the myth that this order respects human rights and is therefore worthy of esteem; the myth that anyone who is industrious can become an entrepreneur--worse yet, the myth that the street vendor is as much an entrepreneur as the owner of a large factory; the myth of the universal right of education, when of all the Brazilian children who enter primary schools only a tiny fraction ever reach the university; the myth of the equality of all individuals, when the question: "Do you know who you're talking to?" is still current among us; the myth of the heroism of the oppressor classes as defenders of "Western Christian civilization" against "materialist barbarism"; the myth of the charity and generosity of the elites, when what they really do as a class is to foster selective "good deeds" (subsequently elaborated into the myth of "disinterested aid," which on the international level was severely criticized by Pope John XXIII); the myth that the dominant elites, "recognizing their duties," promote the advancement of the people, so that the people, in a gesture of gratitude, should accept the words of the elites and be conformed to them; the myth of private property as fundamental to personal human development (so long as oppressors are the only true human beings); the myth of the industriousness of the oppressors and the laziness and dishonesty of the oppressed as well as the myth of the natural inferiority of the latter and the superiority of the former.

Because taxpaying is seen as an emblem of civic worthiness, denying the poor the status of taxpayers has the effect of denying their political standing. Classing a large percentage of the populace as a kind of second-class citizenry is genuinely toxic for democratic norms.

Imagine your child has an emotional bank account. The currency in this bank account is connection, and their behavior at any moment reflects the status of their account, how full or depleted it is. I mentioned earlier the idea of this “connection capital”—when we really connect with a child, see their experience, allow for their feelings, and make an effort to understand what’s going on for them, we build our capital. Having a healthy amount of connection capital leads kids to feel confident, capable, safe, and worthy. And these positive feelings on the inside lead to “good” behavior on the outside—behavior like cooperation, flexibility, and regulation. So in order to create positive change, we have to first build connection, which will lead kids to feel better, which will then lead them to behave better. But note, behavior comes last. We cannot start there. We must start with connection.

Status quo is not very helpful for spiritual growth, for using this short interval between birth and death. On the other hand, expanding our ability to feel comfortable in our own skin and in the world, so that we can be there as much as possible for other people, is a very worthy way to spend a human life.

No one likes to feel used. When the perceived focus becomes the content over the person, people feel used. When teachers are valued only for the test scores of their students, they feel used. When administrators are "successful" only when they achieve "highly effective school" status, they feel used. Eventually, "used" people lose joy in learning and teaching. Curriculum does not teach; teachers do. Standards don't encourage; administrators do. Peaceable schools value personnel and students for who they are as worthy human beings. ... If your mission statement says you care, then specific practices of care should be habits within your school.

Respect isn’t a right. We aren’t entitled to it, and we can never earn it by demanding it. It’s something we earn because of our character—and by giving it to others. If we want to be respected, we have to show ourselves to be worthy of it, not by our status, possessions, or accomplishments, but by honesty, integrity, and responsibility.

The question of the acceptance of theories should, I propose, be demoted to the status of a minor problem. For science may be regarded as a growing system of problems, rather than as a system of beliefs. And for a system of problems, the tentative acceptance of a theory or a conjecture means hardly more than that it is considered worthy of further criticism.

In the unrelenting chase of what is “best,” many of us can unknowingly allow our lives to become defined by materialism. Materialism isn’t simply about loving certain logos or buying nice stuff; rather, it’s a value system that defines our goals and attention and how we spend our days. And it can leave us not just exhausted but unmoored. Pursuing materialistic goals, like high-status careers and money, causes us to invest our time and energy into things that take time away from investing in our social connections, a habit that can make us feel isolated over time. Ironically, the more isolated we feel, the more likely we are to pursue materialistic goals that we hope, even subconsciously, will draw people to us. Acquiring status markers, we believe, will make us worthy of the human connection we crave. It’s a vicious cycle: some people may become materialistic not because they love money more but because they have underdeveloped connections. Instead of attaching to people, they attach to material goods and status markers to fill the void and to try to get the emotional security they’re lacking. But this approach can backfire and undermine the very relationships we’re trying to foster. In fact, people who prioritize materialistic goals tend to have weaker, more transactional relationships: you do for me, I do for you.

The people’s hero does not only have to be someone in possession of the scepter of power. It can be anyone capable of giving unity, prosperity, security, peace and a sense of worthiness to his people. Such a figure gets elevated to the status of a revered hero with the human touch if he imparts a sense of oneness on a multi-racial, multi-ethnic and multi-religious group; especially a diverse people who have been fighting one another for years and centuries...

...The people’s hero does not only have to be someone in possession of the scepter of power. It can be anyone capable of giving unity, prosperity, security, peace and a sense of worthiness to his people. Such a figure gets elevated to the status of a revered hero with the human touch if he imparts a sense of oneness on a multi-racial, multi-ethnic and multi-religious group; especially a diverse people who have been fighting one another for years and centuries...

He turned to face her and studied her as if he could see right through her. “None of them are worthy of you.” A wave of longing coursed through her. “Then who am I to marry?” When he failed to answer, she turned away and fiddled with the flowers on the desk. “Without the advantage of wealth or status, I’m not exactly overrun with prospects like you are.” “Perhaps not,” he said softly, “but at least you can be certain the man who marries you did so for love and not because of your wealth or title.” Charlotte & Sebastian

We find, therefore, Lowell and Mailer ostensibly locked in converse. In fact, out of the thousand separate enclaves of their very separate personalities, they sensed quickly that they now shared one enclave to the hilt: their secret detestation of liberal academic parties to accompany worthy causes. Yes, their snobbery was on this mountainous face close to identical—each had a delight in exactly the other kind of party, a posh evil social affair, they even supported a similar vein of vanity (Lowell with considerably more justice) that if they were doomed to be revolutionaries, rebels, dissenters, anarchists, protesters, and general champions of one Left cause or another, they were also, in private, grands conservateurs, and if the truth be told, poor damn émigré princes. They were willing if necessary (probably) to die for the cause—one could hope the cause might finally at the end have an unexpected hint of wit, a touch of the Lord’s last grace—but wit or no, grace or grace failing, it was bitter rue to have to root up one’s occupations of the day, the week, and the weekend and trot down to Washington for idiot mass manifestations which could only drench one in the most ineradicable kind of mucked-up publicity and have for compensation nothing at this party which might be representative of some of the Devil’s better creations. So Robert Lowell and Norman Mailer feigned deep conversation. They turned their heads to one another at the empty table, ignoring the potentially acolytic drinkers at either elbow, they projected their elbows out in fact like flying buttresses or old Republicans, they exuded waves of Interruption Repellent from the posture of their backs, and concentrated on their conversation, for indeed they were the only two men of remotely similar status in the room. (Explanations about the position of Paul Goodman will follow later.)

[Voltaire] theoretically prefers a republic, but he knows its flaws: it permits factions which, if they do not bring on civil war, at least destroy national unity; it is suited only to small states protected by geographic situation, and as yet unspoiled and untorn with wealth; in general "men are rarely worthy to govern themselves." Republics are transient at best; they are the first form of society, arising from the union of families; the American Indians lived in tribal republics, and Africa is full of such democracies. but differentiation of economic status puts an end to these egalitarian governments; and differentiation is the inevitable accompaniment of development.

Worse still, ‘originality’ – rather than consequence – has become the test of genius. The fact that something is ‘original’ – meaning novel, makes it praise-worthy. In fact, originality has now become indistinguishable from mere changes of fashion. In previous eras, there was not a special status given to novelty as an aspect of high quality work – but since about 1800 in the West there has been: greatness is supposedly mostly a matter of being innovative. Yet while great geniuses may innovate this is not the rule, for instance Gluck and J.C. Bach were greater innovators, but much lesser composers than, J.S. Bach and Mozart; Constable and Gainsborough were less original, but higher quality, painters than Francis Bacon or Lucien Freud.

Leadership is about having clear & grand vision, taking initiatives, possessing courage to question the status quo, ability to set large goals, consistently inspire self & others towards those goals, being self motivated and capability to motivate others, being spirited & strong to surmount any obstacle on the path, humility & openness to listen and learn from others, strength to stand for what he believes is right, while being flexible enough to revisit & review his beliefs, ability to organize & shift paradigms of his own & others, ability to attract, retain, develop & work with bigger leaders than himself, ability to trust others & being trust worthy , to think big & not petty, being above self, kind & giving, ability to sacrifice for others and to be bereft of insecurities & suspicion, ability to take risks, learn from both success & failure, being able to forget & forgive mistakes and mishaps of others, being focused, patient & persistent, to possess an amazing ability to be simple & easy to understand, to communicate & express with clarity and above all, being human.

Making the most of an experience: Living fully is extolled everywhere in popular culture. I have only to turn on the television at random to be assailed with the following messages: “It’s the best a man can get.” “It’s like having an angel by your side.” “Every move is smooth, every word is cool. I never want to lose that feeling.” “You look, they smile. You win, they go home.” What is being sold here? A fantasy of total sensory pleasure, social status, sexual attraction, and the self-image of a winner. As it happens, all these phrases come from the same commercial for razor blades, but living life fully is part of almost any ad campaign. What is left out, however, is the reality of what it actually means to fully experience something. Instead of looking for sensory overload that lasts forever, you’ll find that the experiences need to be engaged at the level of meaning and emotion. Meaning is essential. If this moment truly matters to you, you will experience it fully. Emotion brings in the dimension of bonding or tuning in: An experience that touches your heart makes the meaning that much more personal. Pure physical sensation, social status, sexual attraction, and feeling like a winner are generally superficial, which is why people hunger for them repeatedly. If you spend time with athletes who have won hundreds of games or with sexually active singles who have slept with hundreds of partners, you’ll find out two things very quickly: (1) Numbers don’t count very much. The athlete usually doesn’t feel like a winner deep down; the sexual conqueror doesn’t usually feel deeply attractive or worthy. (2) Each experience brings diminishing returns; the thrill of winning or going to bed becomes less and less exciting and lasts a shorter time. To experience this moment, or any moment, fully means to engage fully. Meeting a stranger can be totally fleeting and meaningless, for example, unless you enter the individual’s world by finding out at least one thing that is meaningful to his or her life and exchange at least one genuine feeling. Tuning in to others is a circular flow: You send yourself out toward people; you receive them as they respond to you. Notice how often you don’t do that. You stand back and insulate yourself, sending out only the most superficial signals and receive little or nothing back. The same circle must be present even when someone else isn’t involved. Consider the way three people might observe the same sunset. The first person is obsessing over a business deal and doesn’t even see the sunset, even though his eyes are registering the photons that fall on their retinas. The second person thinks, “Nice sunset. We haven’t had one in a while.” The third person is an artist who immediately begins a sketch of the scene. The differences among the three are that the first person sent nothing out and received nothing back; the second allowed his awareness to receive the sunset but had no awareness to give back to it—his response was rote; the third person was the only one to complete the circle: He took in the sunset and turned it into a creative response that sent his awareness back out into the world with something to give. If you want to fully experience life, you must close the circle.

This is why churches that try the most self-consciously to avoid social issues and political questions become, unwittingly, the most political of all. The founders of my church tradition, in concert with others, spoke much of the “spirituality of the church” as a reason for avoiding “political” issues. To some degree, they were right. The church does not bear the sword that’s been given to the state; the church advances by spiritual, not carnal, means. But the “spirituality of the church” was a convenient doctrine. My denomination was founded back in the nineteenth century by those who advocated for human slavery, and who sought to keep their consciences and their ballots and their wallets away from a transcendent word that would speak against the sinful injustice of a regime of kidnapping, rape, and human beings wickedly deigning to buy and sell other human beings created in the image of God. Slavery, they argued (to their shame), was a “political” issue that ought not distract the church from its mission: evangelism and discipleship. What such a move empowered was not just social injustice (which would have been bad enough), but also personal sin. When so-called “simple gospel preaching” churches in 1856 Alabama or 1925 Mississippi calls sinners to repentance for fornicating and gambling but not for slaveholding or lynching, those churches may be many things but they are hardly non-political. By not addressing these issues, they are addressing them, by implicitly stating that they are not worthy of the moral scrutiny of the church, that they will not be items of report at the Judgment Seat of Christ. These churches, thus, bless the status quo, with all the fealty of a court chaplain. The same is true of a church in twenty-first-century America that doesn’t speak to the pressing issues of justice and righteousness around us, such as the horror of abortion and the persisting sins of racial injustice.

I know I will never see that smile the same way again, it will never bring me instant comfort nor warm my soul the same again. I know I will miss the flood of emotions that released for your touch to point of dehydration. I will miss the small, pulsating, vibrations running through my body as your voice ricochet in my ear. I will miss the beauty I saw in your pain as you took me on a journey through your soul, thu conversations I will miss our inner child's spontaneous and planned play dates. I will miss the silence in my mind commanded by you taking the lead. I will miss daydreaming about loving you forever, because I still had an ounce of hope leftover after a lifetime of searching for you. I will miss you forgiving me after, I recovered from a trigger, never appreciated the punishment that came with it tho. I will miss not being able to protect your heart from the pain I recognize, that your ego guards from your souls innocents that your mind can't tolerate yet. I will miss the feeling I felt knowing you could really be here with me forever because the exchange of laughter, wisdom and moments never ended. I will miss loving the man you are now in life, because even without the potential I see, you are worthy just as you are . I will miss things about you that you will never know, it was never about status or statuses I didn't want the spotlight, I wanted to be behind the scenes. I just wanted to support and love you. I wanted to guide you through parts of life that almost broke me, that I see you encountering. I will miss having somewhere to pour almost all of me. I will miss the possibility of being loved forever, I know I felt it though the roughness of your sore hands as I caressed trying to alleviate yhe pain. I will miss your grumpy days and I still regret not knowing how to comfort you on the hardest ones. I will miss who I sometimes selfishly dreamed I could be if you could just love me in the way I could feel. I'd dream of waiting for u to get home, (its the one we talked about getting after winning the lottery) . In that moment I swear it was the first time my soul wanted another day voluntarily. I will miss you not understanding my text, but we would see eye to eye when they physically met. I will miss you teaching me, and correcting me softly. I will miss you being gentle, when I didn't even know I needed it. I know it was hard sometimes. I will miss loving you beyond myself. I will miss all those moments I wanted to pull u into me and just feel you and kiss you. I wanted you all the time, it took so much to hold back from showing you, it was out of fear. I SHOULD of done it, would of got to this point faster. I regret not loving you with all me authenticly. I will miss what never was a friend, but everything I never had In one.

Any dictatorship takes a psychological toll on its subjects. If you are treated as an untrustworthy person-a potential slacker, drug addict, or thief-you may begin to feel less trust worthy yourself. If you are constantly reminded of your lowly position in the social hierarchy, whether by individual managers or by a plethora of impersonal rules, you begin to accept that unfortunate status. To draw for a moment from an entirely different corner of my life, that part of me still attached to the biological sciences, there is ample evidence that animals-rats and monkeys, for example-that are forced into a subordinate status within their social systems adapt their brain chemistry accordingly, becoming "depressed" in humanlike ways. Their behavior is anxious and withdrawn; the level of serotonin (the neurotransmitter boosted by some antidepressants) declines in their brains. And-what is especially relevant here-they avoid fighting even in self-defense. Humans are, of course, vastly more complicated; even in situations of extreme subordination, we can pump up our self-esteem with thoughts of our families, our religion, our hopes for the future. But as much as any other social animal, and more so than many, we depend for our self-image on the humans immediately around us-to the point of altering our perceptions of the world so as to fit in with theirs. My guess is that the indignities imposed on so many low-wage workers - the drug tests, the constant surveillance, being "reamed out" by managers - are part of what keeps wages low. If you're made to feel unworthy enough, you may come to think that what you're paid is what you are actually worth. It is hard to imagine any other function for workplace authoritarianism. Managers may truly believe that, without their unremitting efforts, all work would quickly grind to a halt. That is not my impression. While I encountered some cynics and plenty of people who had learned to budget their energy, I never met an actual slacker or, for that matter, a drug addict or thief. On the contrary, I was amazed and sometimes saddened by the pride people took in jobs that rewarded them so meagerly, either in wages or in recognition. Often, in fact, these people experienced management as an obstacle to getting the job done as it should be done.

Queen bees internalized the low status of women and in order to feel worthy themselves wanted only to associate with men. Often, these queen bees were rewarded for maintaining the status quo and not promoting other women.

What makes a man worthy and that which gives him worth is not tittle and status, it is the mere fact that he is human being, created in God's own image.

Do adults also use aggression to boost their status? Certainly. This type of behavior can take place at the individual level, like bad-mouthing a neighbor to make ourselves seem a little more worthy of attention, or in public, such as when Donald Trump’s poll numbers rose following every insult he lobbed at a reporter or opponent. Sometimes it is even global, as when a nation attacks a weaker foe to assert its dominant position. In each of these cases, the use of aggression is shortsighted, because while it may result in a temporary boost in status and offer a little jolt of social reward, it is not ultimately fulfilling the wishes that really matter.

It is, indeed, one of the basic moral blindspots of American conservatism that its intellectual and leadership energy have never been focused in a proactive way on America's racial-caste legacy. This represents a fundamental moral crisis of modern American conservatism.... American conservatives typically ignored the authoritarian and violent racial-caste practices and values arrayed against black Americans in southern states where the vast majority of blacks live. On the other hand, American conservatives have, throughout this century, often embraced freedom movements elsewhere in the world --in Europe, Latin America, East Asia-- but always firmly resisting a proactive embrace of the black American civil rights movement as a bona fide freedom movement fully worthy of their support. So it is in the shadow of this dismal record of mainstream American conservatism vis-a-vis black Americans' long and arduous quest for equality of status that new black conservatives have emerged.

It is very easy to prove to anyone that religious people have no morals, that their public image is a facade, and that they hide the most dangerous perversions. Because you see, they don’t consider you, the outsider, worthy of sympathy or honesty. And so, they consider as legitimate to lie and abuse, and disrespect, even attack violently, slander and manipulate any outsider. The most vicious insults I ever heard came from the mouths of people who consider themselves above moral judgement. They do this in the premise that their group secures their moral status. And as a matter of fact, it does. Nobody will ever act against a member of his own religious group, no matter how wrong he is. And in doing so, anyone sells his soul for cheap. The thing is, by doing that, they are also justifying a very demonic attitude towards people, because we are talking about people here, and not just “outsiders”. It is just that they don’t consider outsiders to their group real human beings, like they are, you see. And so, by being part of a religion, christians, muslims, jews, rosicrucians, hindus, buddhists, freemasons and scientologists, end up justifying being the cruelest of all people on earth. Hell must be having a laugh on this for many thousands of years. Because, you see, all the demons are there, in those groups. That’s not hard to imagine, since the most racist and xenophobic nations also claim to be the most religious orientated, and when you give too much emphasis to a religion, you will invariably expose yourself to this cheap trick played by the devil, of making you sell your soul for cheap. And unless you are truly a God chosen soul, you will fall for this trick, because you won't have the courage to be separated from what you considered previously as being a divine path. Few souls dare to admit that it is impossible for a true moral person to be part of any religion, simply because they’re all perverted. You need a very high ethical level to be able to see that, and those people, in these groups, don't have it. They speak the most vividly about morals, and yet, are the ones nobody should listen, because listening to them is like listening to demons describing paradise. They are not there, in their own words, they don't even see what they are talking about, they don't apply it. They are a scam. Their existence is a scam. And if you confront them with their own scam, their mask will fall off, and you will see their true demonic face. Because that's who they truly are. When you sell your soul for cheap to hell, you become a part of it. And that's who you are. That's why when the mask falls, they show you horrible, disgusting and very ugly appearances. And I have never met one single group in the entire planet where this does not happen. As a matter of fact, the more a group talks about evil, the more certainly it is that they represent that very same evil.

As she amassed more and more, she noticed a trend in the way the authors of the letters—almost always mothers—were framing their family’s lives: as an endless, packed, frenetic stream of busyness. She began to realize that they were, in fact, competing:“It’s about showing status,” Burnett told Brigid Schulte, author of Overwhelmed. “That if you’re busy, you’re important. You’re leading a full and worthy life.”12 Busy-ness, in other words, as a very certain sort of class.

Greatness is something bestowed on those who are the first, the best, or who last the longest. Heroes are born, not out of mere accomplishments, but out of a life lived. How tragic these days when our images of heroes are stained and shattered by headlines of drug abuse, arrests, and criminal charges. Where are the young men and women who are worthy role models for our kids? Where are those who make footsteps in which America's youth can follow? When will we realize that heroes aren't made in the signing of a multi-million dollar contract, or just piling up sports records. On the contrary, heroes are not built from without, but rather bred from within. Bestowing the title of "hero" is, to be sure, an individual issue. And perhaps we should reserve it for a more select few. Maybe it should be more difficult to earn the status than it is to merely accept it. We have lowered the standards for our heroes.

Whiles much of the Victorian Era's education prepared young people for the workforce, school looked different for children of wealthy families. A governess would offer the upper class children lessons in music and art and languages that in turn benefited the child's education and understanding of the world. Meanwhile, the children in the lower classes received only the minimal basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. An important premise of the born person approach is that people of every background and status should have access to a wide curriculum and the freedom to search for knowledge. Each child is worthy of a liberal education for all.

Neither call nor ordination confer a status, an indelible character, worthiness or some quality that enables the one so called or ordained to fulfill the office. Neither call nor ordination, make the one called or ordained “a repository of sacral or numinous power.

It was a question worthy of a magician, because magic dealt in the gaps between certainties, and the truth of his status would only be resolved into fact once he tried to change it.

White superiority, which lashes out in racism, is wholly uninterested in deservedness. It is persistent beyond poverty, beyond socioeconomics, beyond educational attainment or even celebrity status. It does not care how hard you work or where you live. It is not interested in how you dress or speak. My skin means that I am always a worthy candidate to be the victim of white superiority and its tragic possibilities.

JUST WHAT IS initiation? A distinction must be made between its procedure, that is, is functional operation, and its purpose. This purpose is a state or condition of preparation. The preparation consists of a series of tests and trials of the initiate to determine worthiness of elevation to a higher religious or social status. This preparation is likewise a form of instruction—a teaching, usually in symbolic form—of a specialized knowledge.

nothing statusy about being stranded on the road. Designer-label companies charge more because they've spent a fortune on marketing and advertising to build their brand's status, their perceived value. I roll my eyes at people who, for example, wear Facconable shirts or Rolex watches. Right or wrong, I perceive them as so insecure that they need to attempt to appear worthy by silly spending.

League of Legends has become well known for at least two things: proving the power of the free-to-play model in the West and a vicious player community.”[lxxix] To combat the trolls, the game creators designed a reward system leveraging Bandura’s social learning theory, which they called Honor Points (figure 23). The system gave players the ability to award points for particularly sportsmanlike conduct worthy of recognition. These virtual kudos encouraged positive behavior and helped the best and most cooperative players to stand out in the community. The number of points earned was highly variable and could only be conferred by other players. Honor Points soon became a coveted marker of tribe-conferred status and helped weed out trolls by signaling to others which players should be avoided.

When identity is based on outward titles, material possessions, academic achievements or even relationship status, we place ourselves in a very fragile state. Until we are simply “enough” because of who we are “being” and not because of what we are “doing,” our self-esteem and worth will continue to be “tossed to and fro,” as our outer conditions are subject to change.

A few lucky or worthy men (kings, movie stars, top athletes) reach positions that enable them to have whatever sort of sex lives they want. It is revealing to see what they choose. In general, they do pick a favorite partner, such as a wife. But they also generally have plenty of others on the side: mistresses, groupies, concubines. Today most such men feel pressure (despite their high status, and even because of it) to settle down with one wife and be faithful to her. Even so, they often find ways to enjoy others. If their choices were truly up to them, we would see more of the harems and other such systems of rotating bedmates.

THE EGO’S SEARCH FOR WHOLENESS Another aspect of the emotional pain that is an intrinsic part of the egoic mind is a deep-seated sense of lack or incompleteness, of not being whole. In some people, this is conscious, in others unconscious. If it is conscious, it manifests as the unsettling and constant feeling of not being worthy or good enough. If it is unconscious, it will only be felt indirectly as an intense craving, wanting and needing. In either case, people will often enter into a compulsive pursuit of ego-gratification and things to identify with in order to fill this hole they feel within. So they strive after possessions, money, success, power, recognition, or a special relationship, basically so that they can feel better about themselves, feel more complete. But even when they attain all these things, they soon find that the hole is still there, that it is bottomless. Then they are really in trouble, because they cannot delude themselves anymore. Well, they can and do, but it gets more difficult. As long as the egoic mind is running your life, you cannot truly be at ease; you cannot be at peace or fulfilled except for brief intervals when you obtained what you wanted, when a craving has just been fulfilled. Since the ego is a derived sense of self, it needs to identify with external things. It needs to be both defended and fed constantly. The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, personal and family history, belief systems, and often also political, nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you. Do you find this frightening? Or is it a relief to know this? All of these things you will have to relinquish sooner or later. Perhaps you find it as yet hard to believe, and I am certainly not asking you to believe that your identity cannot be found in any of those things. You will know the truth of it for yourself. You will know it at the latest when you feel death approaching. Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to “die before you die” — and find that there is no death.

To “be holy” is not to achieve a status but to live a life worthy of that status.

I know I will never see that smile the same way again, it will never bring me instant comfort nor warm my soul the same again. I know I will miss the flood of emotions that released for your touch to point of dehydration. I will miss the small, pulsating, vibrations running through my body as your voice ricochet in my ear. I will miss the beauty I saw in your pain as you took me on a journey through your soul, thu conversations I will miss our inner child's spontaneous and planned play dates. I will miss the silence in my mind commanded by you taking the lead. I will miss daydreaming about loving you forever, because I still had an ounce of hope leftover after a lifetime of searching for you. I will miss you forgiving me after, I recovered from a trigger, never appreciated the punishment that came with it tho. I will miss not being able to protect your heart from the pain I recognize, that your ego guards from your souls innocents that your mind can't tolerate yet. I will miss the feeling I felt knowing you could really be here with me forever because the exchange of laughter, wisdom and moments never ended. I will miss loving the man you are now in life, because even without the potential I see, you are worthy just as you are . I will miss things about you that you will never know, it was never about status or statuses I didn't want the spotlight, I wanted to be behind the scenes. I just wanted to support and love you. I wanted to guide you through parts of life that almost broke me, that I see you encountering. I will miss having somewhere to pour almost all of me. I will miss the possibility of being loved forever, I know I felt it though the roughness of your sore hands as I caressed trying to alleviate the pain. I will miss your grumpy days and I still regret not knowing how to comfort you on the hardest ones. I will miss who I sometimes selfishly dreamed I could be if you could just love me in the way I could feel. I'd dream of waiting for u to get home, (its the one we talked about getting after winning the lottery) . In that moment I swear it was the first time my soul wanted another day voluntarily. I will miss you not understanding my text, but we would see eye to eye when they physically met. I will miss you teaching me, and correcting me softly. I will miss you being gentle, when I didn't even know I needed it. I know it was hard sometimes. I will miss how you kept things together, always calm and steady, I was the complete opposite, clumsy and messy. You were everything I wasn't, and I loved you for that the most. I will miss thinking of you as my sun, and I will miss you calling me Starr I will miss loving you beyond myself. I will miss all those moments I wanted to pull u into me and just feel you and kiss you. I wanted you all the time, it took so much to hold back from showing you, it was out of fear of rejection of not being enough. I SHOULD of done it, would of got to this point faster. I regret not loving you with all me authenticly. I will miss what never was a friend, but everything I never had In one

Bullying is about judging. It’s about establishing who is more worthy or important. The more powerful kids judge the less powerful kids. They judge them to be less valuable human beings, and they rub their faces in it on a daily basis. And it’s clear what the bullies get out of it. Like the boys in Sheri Levy’s study, they get a boost in self-esteem. It’s not that bullies are low in self-esteem, but judging and demeaning others can give them a self-esteem rush. Bullies also gain social status from their actions. Others may look up to them and judge them to be cool, powerful, or funny. Or may fear them. Either way, they’ve upped their standing. There’s a big dose of fixed-mindset thinking in the bullies: Some people are superior and some are inferior. And the bullies are the judges. Eric Harris, one of the Columbine shooters, was their perfect target. He had a chest deformity, he was short, he was a computer geek, and he was an outsider, not from Colorado. They judged him mercilessly. When we hear about acts of school violence, we usually think it’s only bad kids from bad homes who could ever take matters into their own hands. But it’s startling how quickly average, everyday kids with a fixed mindset think about violent revenge. In our study, the students with the growth mindset were not as prone to see the bullying as a reflection of who they were. Instead, they saw it as a psychological problem of the bullies, a way for the bullies to gain status or charge their self-esteem: “I’d think that the reason he is bothering me is probably that he has problems at home or at school with his grades.” Or “They need to get a life—not just feel good if they make me feel bad.” Their plan was often designed to educate the bullies: “I would really actually talk to them. I would ask them questions (why are they saying all of these things and why are they doing all of this to me).” Or “Confront the person and discuss the issue; I would feel like trying to help them see they are not funny.” The students with the growth mindset also strongly agreed that: “I would want to forgive them eventually” and “My number one goal would be to help them become better people.

This day I remember well. It is the very first moment in my life when I saw desperation enacted by hate. I watched as the second plane flew into the second tower, the pit in my stomach plummeting to a place I have yet to recover. The devastation of those jumping, the visions of cement and debris falling from the sky like thunder. I remember not being able to reach my friends and coworkers, the fear paralyzing me as I imagined them fighting for their lives and the lives of countless others. I remember my cousin who was in the Pentagon who was narrowly spared that day. That day — like it did for so many — that changed me. Forever. And while we honor those lost and remember those who did such things, remember that it was everyone coming together that saved this nation. It was us standing beside one another regardless of politics or religion, race or gender, and no one cared about wealth or poverty, or anything else for that matter. In that moment America stood tall. Today we are completely undone … unraveled and our excuse is moot. I wish we could, as a nation, realize that 9/11 represented a multitude of things. Our freedom, our fear, our triumphant spirit to overcome tragedy and terrorism—foreign and domestic—and our ability to eliminate prejudice when confronting human decency. Today we remember the many lives lost, those still suffering, and those who bravely and courageously continue to do all they can to protect our freedom to speak out, to challenge oppressors, and to rise above the lunacy. New Yorkers are proof that communities of all colors, beliefs and socio economic statuses can come together in the face of adversity. I hope this country — state by state — can stop acting like children and instead act like human beings. That we can be worthy of the months and weeks and days that followed 9/11 when we rose to the occasion as a collective whole.

Two men are travelling together along a road. One of them believes that it leads to a Celestial City, the other that it leads nowhere; but since this is the only road there is, both must travel it. Neither has been this way before, and therefore neither is able to say what they will find around each next comer. During their journey they meet both with moments of refreshment and delight, and with moments of hardship and danger. All the time one of them thinks of his journey as a pilgrimage to the Celestial City and interprets the pleasant parts as encouragements and the obstacles as trials of his purpose and lessons in endurance, prepared by the king of that city and designed to make of him a worthy citizen of the place when at last he arrives there. The other, however, believes none of this and sees their journey as an unavoidable and aimless ramble. Since he has no choice in the matter, he enjoys the good and endures the bad. But for him there is no Celestial City to be reached, no all-encompassing purpose ordaining their journey; only the road itself and the luck of the road in good weather and in bad. During the course of the journey the issue between them is not an experimental one. They do not entertain different expectations about the corning details of the road, but only about its ultimate destination. And yet when they do turn the last corner of it will be apparent that one of them has been right all the time and the other wrong. Thus although the issue between them has not been experimental, it has nevertheless from the start been a real issue. They have not merely felt differently about the road; for one was feeling appropriately and the other inappropriately in relation to the actual state of affairs. Their opposed interpretations of the road constituted genuinely rival assertions, though assertions whose assertion-status has the peculiar characteristic of being guaranteed retrospectively by a future crux.

The best bet when dealing with kings was to make a reasonable effort to play the game, but one that is still bound to fail. The fourteenth-century Arab traveler Ibn Battuta tells of the customs of the King of Sind, a terrifying monarch who took a particular delight in displays of arbitrary power.33 It was customary for foreign worthies visiting the king to present him with magnificent presents; whatever the gift was, he would invariably respond by presenting the bearer with something many times its value. As a result, a substantial business developed where local bankers would lend money to such visitors to finance particularly spectacular gifts, knowing they could be well repaid from the proceeds of royal one-upmanship. The king must have known about this. He didn’t object—since the whole point was to show that his wealth exceeded all possible equivalence—anyway he knew if he really needed to, he could always expropriate the bankers. Kings knew that the really important game was not economic, but one of status, and theirs was absolute.

The Reason for God, Timothy Keller argues that grace breaks decisively from the “performance narrative,” understood as the attempt to ground one’s status before God either partly or wholly in one’s performance in any number of moral or ritual areas.17 This performance narrative also rhythms contemporary society, crystallizing in what Michael Sandel calls the “tyranny of merit,” namely the assumption that the only factor limiting success is a lack of effort or ability and we can achieve anything if only we want it desperately enough. So both in terms of religion and in terms of daily life, we rate our success and our worthiness by our performance.

Americans gear all their living to a constantly challenging world and are prepared to accept the challenge. Japanese reassurances are based rather on a way of life that is planned and charted beforehand and where the greatest threat comes from the unforeseen. The Japanese, more than any other sovereign nation, have been conditioned to a world where the smallest details of conduct are mapped and status is assigned. During two centuries where law and order were maintained in such a world with an iron hand, the Japanese learned to identify this meticulously plotted hierarchy with safety and security. So long as they stayed within known boundaries and so long as they fulfilled known obligations, they could trust their world. The Japanese point of view is that obeying the law is repayment upon their highest indebtedness. In spite of the fact that Japan is one of the great Buddhist nations in the world, her ethics at this point contrast sharply with the teachings of Gautama Buddha and of the holy books of Buddhism. The Japanese do not condemn self-gratification. They are not Puritans. They consider physical pleasures good and worthy of cultivation. Buddhist teachers and modern nationalistic leaders have written and spoken on this theme: human nature in Japan is naturally good and to be trusted. It does not need to flight and evil half of itself. It needs to cleanse the windows of its soul and act with appropriateness on every different occasion. The Japanese define the supreme task of life as fulfilling one's obligations. They fully accept the fact that repaying "on" means sacrificing one's personal desires and pleasures. The idea that the pursuit of happiness is a serious goal of life is to them an amazing and immoral doctrine. Happiness is a relaxation in which one indulges when one can. Zen seeks only the light man can find in himself. if you do this, if you do that, the adults say to the children, the word will laugh at you. The rules are particularistic and situational and a great many of them concern what we should call etiquette. They require subordinating one's own will to the ever-increasing duties to neighbors, to family and country. The child must restrain himself, he must recognize his indebtedness. Training is explicit for every art and skill. It is the habit that is taught, not just the rules. Adults do not consider that children will "pick up" the proper habits when the time to employ them comes around. Great things can only be achieved through self-restraint. Japanese people often keep their thoughts busy with trivial minutiae in order to stave off awareness of their real feelings. They are mechanical in the performance of a disciplined routine which is fundamentally meaningless to them. Japan's real strength which she can use in remaking herself into a peaceful nation lies in her ability to say to a course of action: "that failed" and then to throw her energies into other channels. The Japanese have an ethic of alternatives.

People care about their social worth, their status, quite as much as they care about money and power. In the classic film On the Waterfront, the character played by Marlon Brando famously laments, “I could have been a contender, I could have been somebody.” The familiar yearning to “be someone” in life is not so much about money and power as about being publicly seen and acknowledged as worthy and valuable by the community. So status is not merely an instrumental cultural device for managing common situations; it is a deeply felt and highly consequential personal ranking.

I had always heard that modern day police departments were rooted in slave patrols, yet I was still surprised by the clear connection in my research. Many, many police officers set out, each day, to do their job of protecting the people they serve and would never think of shooting, let alone killing, an unarmed person simply because the sight of black or brown skin made them fear for their lives. But it's hard to divorce the way in which slave patrols in the south targeted black people before slavery was abolished from the way in which police departments, their reorganized reincarnations, did afterward. To these forces, black people were always the enemy- a community to be tamed, whose mere existence presents a threat to the maintenance of the status quo. And those ideals have clearly persisted through generations of law enforcement who failed to see black people as free, equal, and worthy of living their lives unbothered.

The histories of white supremacy and ableism are inextricably entwined, both forged in the crucible of colonial conquest and capitalist domination. One cannot look at the history of US slavery, the stealing of indigenous lands, and US imperialism without seeing the way that white supremacy leverages ableism to create a subjugated ‘other’ that is deemed less worthy/abled/smart/capable … We cannot comprehend ableism without grasping its interrelations with heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, colonialism and capitalism. Each system benefits from extracting profits and status from the subjugated ‘other.

Perhaps nothing separates modern man from the Greeks as much as his aversion to thinking about the human in terms of perfection. The artistic embodiment of the Homeric deities served as an optimal status criterion of the form and content of human perfection. Extremely elevated standards were maintained in physiognomy, creativity, and discernment, always with a view to the interconnectedness of warfare, wisdom, and beauty. Grandeur, prowess, dignity, and nobility seem available for all who act heroically and with nobility. However, this is only so because it is not the mediocrity of the rabble that is being elevated to the pinnacle of human worthiness... As Otto deftly explains, only a spiritually poor age would think to reduce the human capacity for heroic action to a search for bourgeois comfort, safety, and happiness.

A fortune earned with merit lasts longer than a fortune earned by inheritance.

After his triumphant success he deeply resented his Cinderella status, so eloquently denoted in the dining arrangements where, as he reported with disgust, he had to sit ‘above the cooks but below the valets’.189 This was a humiliating anticlimax to Munich, and over the next three months his anger and frustration simmered, seethed and eventually exploded. He had a series of insolent meetings with the Archbishop or his representatives, in which first voices and then fists too were raised. On 8 June 1781, Wolfgang was literally thrown down the stairs of Colloredo’s Viennese residence and dismissed for ever from his service, ‘with a kick on the arse, by order of our worthy Prince Archbishop’,190 as Wolfgang reported to his father the following day.

Survival (animal survival, physical, bodily survival) can do without self-love. As a matter of fact, it may do better without it than in its company! The roads of the survival instincts and of self-love may run parallel, but they may also run in opposite directions… Self-love may rebel against the continuation of life. Self-love may prompt us to invite the danger and to welcome the threat. Self-love can prod us to reject a life that is not up to our love’s standards and therefore unworthy of living. Because what we love in our self-love is the selves fit to be loved. What we love is the state, or the hope, of being loved. Of being objects worthy of love, being recognized as such, and given the proof of that recognition. In short: in order to have self-love, we need to be loved. Refusal of love – denial of the status of a love-worthy object – breeds self-hatred. Self-love is built out of the love offered to us by others. If substitutes are used for its construction, they must be likenesses, however fraudulent, of such love. Others must love us first, so that we can begin to love ourselves.

When an evil deed is recurrent, the initial repugnance diminishes to tolerance; the tolerance transforms to acceptance. The acceptance leads to expectance. For instance, the term necessary evil confers on it the status of benevolence, hence indispensable. This is how, the unbecoming becomes the becoming and the becoming becomes the unbecoming.

It’s not so much the act of authenticity that challenges the status quo—I think of it as the audacity of authenticity. Most of us have shame triggers around being perceived as self-indulgent or self-focused. We don’t want our authenticity to be perceived as selfish or narcissistic. When I first started mindfully practicing authenticity and worthiness, I felt like every day was a walk through a gauntlet of gremlins. Their voices can be loud and unrelenting: “What if I think I’m enough, but others don’t?” “What if I let my imperfect self be seen and known, and nobody likes what they see?” “What if my friends/ family/ co-workers like the perfect me better … you know, the one who takes care of everything and everyone?

The system gave players the ability to award points for particularly sportsmanlike conduct worthy of recognition. These virtual kudos encouraged positive behavior and helped the best and most cooperative players to stand out in the community. The number of points earned was highly variable and could only be conferred by other players. Honor Points soon became a coveted marker of tribe-conferred status and helped weed out trolls by signaling to others which players should be avoided.

Reciprocal altruism brings its own agenda to the presentation of self, and thus to the deception of self. Whereas status hierarchies place a premium on our seeming competent, attractive, strong, smart, etcetera, reciprocal altruism puts its accent on niceness, integrity, fairness. These are the things that make us seem like worthy reciprocal altruists. They make people want to strike up relationships with us. Puffing up our reputations as decent and generous folks can’t hurt, and it often helps.

This was the background for Benn's harsh objections. Versed in the arguments put forward by Philosophical Anthropology, Benn was anything but a concerned humanist; he was not irritated by the denial of man's higher status but by Uexkiill's putative blindness to man's fundamentally problematic nature. This critique of Uexkull (which will resurface time and again) is a kind of speciesism in a minor key that tries to reclaim a special place for humans not as the masters but as the misfits of creation. There are always faint echoes of Kierkegaard: somehow, we are special because we are broken, lost, abandoned, or derelict incomplete beings. (Alternately, "unfinished" humans may be labeled as evolutionary to-do projects that await completion.) Uexkiill's "jovial" theory appears to be devoid of tragedy. There is—to span the extremes of the German pantheon—too much Goethe and too little Nietzsche. Heaping insult upon insult, Benn acknowledged the similarity between Uexkull and Goethe but then added that in Goethe's time this type of harmonious leveling of differences may have been "worthy of a great man," but nowadays it revealed nothing other than the "primary joviality of the biologist and insect specialist.

The unlettered does his utmost to distance a sign-post because most host almost a legion of inexplicable inscriptions. The illiterate is considerate of his deficiency and makes a deliberate effort commensurate with his status lest he is deemed obdurate.

Choosing authenticity is not an easy choice. E. E. Cummings wrote, “To be nobody-but-yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody but yourself—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight—and never stop fighting.” “Staying real” is one of the most courageous battles that we’ll ever fight. When we choose to be true to ourselves, the people around us will struggle to make sense of how and why we are changing. Partners and children might feel fearful and unsure about the changes they’re seeing. Friends and family may worry about how our authenticity practice will affect them and our relationships with them. Some will find inspiration in our new commitment; others may perceive that we’re changing too much—maybe even abandoning them or holding up an uncomfortable mirror. It’s not so much the act of authenticity that challenges the status quo—I think of it as the audacity of authenticity. Most of us have shame triggers around being perceived as self-indulgent or self-focused. We don’t want our authenticity to be perceived as selfish or narcissistic. When I first started mindfully practicing authenticity and worthiness, I felt like every day was a walk through a gauntlet of gremlins. Their voices can be loud and unrelenting: “What if I think I’m enough, but others don’t?” “What if I let my imperfect self be seen and known, and nobody likes what they see?” “What if my friends/family/co-workers like the perfect me better … you know, the one who takes care of everything and everyone?” Sometimes, when we push the system, it pushes back. The pushback can be everything from eye rolls and whispers to relationship struggles and feelings of isolation. There can also be cruel and shaming responses to our authentic voices. In my research on authenticity and shame, I found that speaking out is a major shame trigger for women. Here’s how the research participants described the struggle to be authentic: Don’t make people feel uncomfortable but be honest. Don’t upset anyone or hurt anyone’s feelings but say what’s on your mind. Sound informed and educated but not like a know-it-all. Don’t say anything unpopular or controversial but have the courage to disagree with the crowd. I also found that men and women struggle when their opinions, feelings, and beliefs conflict with our culture’s gender expectations. For example, research on the attributes that we associate with “being feminine” tells us that some of the most important qualities for women are thin, nice, and modest.1 That means if women want to play it totally safe, we have to be willing to stay as small, quiet, and attractive as possible. When looking at the attributes associated with masculinity, the researchers identified these as important attributes for men: emotional control, primacy of work, control over women, and pursuit of status.2 That means if men want to play it safe, they need to stop feeling, start earning, and give up on meaningful connection.

All societies take care of their material needs, and the pursuit of private gain is always present. But the attainment of personal possessions had been, for the most part of history, considered a less important mark of distinction and status than the demonstration of other traits... According to Polyani, this thinking fundamentally changed in the last five centuries and in parts of the Western world as, with the rise of capitalism, feudal society was reorganized around the principles of the marketplace. It is only in the resulting capitalist works that displays of feed and the pursuit of material gain have been considered worthy behaviour - behavior that is actively encouraged and even regarded as the very essence of the human personality.

The hyper-individualist finds himself enmeshed in a network of conditional love. I am worthy of being loved only when I have achieved the status or success the world expects of me. I

Beauty, well-being, the habit and urge to groom the self that is instilled by years of care and grooming from others, the conviction of lovability that makes one feel worthy of grooming: these are inequalities that separate Snape from Lily, alongside class and blood status.

The path to self-discovery is not a straight line. It’s a zigzag. We move in and out of awareness: one step forward, three steps to the left, a baby step back, another leap forward. A lightbulb moment might shine brightly one day, but then flicker the next. It takes work to hold tightly to a certain consciousness, to live in its wisdom. Every day, I have to intentionally maintain an awareness of my value. I know I’m worthy. But you don’t cross over into the Land of Self-Worth and just become a permanent resident. You have to keep your passport current. You have to work to preserve your status.

Your soul is what harbors your strength to push this body to the next level. Your soul encourages your mind to charge and manipulate the magic energy that surrounds us. Your soul is what allows you to breathe in the air all around us, and that very soul is what leaves this hollow body when our time is up. True attraction doesn't come from this shell, Cassandra." He paused and moved his hand to lay upon the center of my chest. "It comes from the soul that knows what it deserves. It's worthy of being admired whether it's the admiration of rank, status, power, beauty, talents, or raw dignity. Your soul can retrieve anything you wish for it to bring into your life, and with that mindset, you can manifest any area of your life to fall into the realms of your own satisfaction.

True merit is like steel and not like cotton, it seems small from outside but weighs heavy inside.

Mate, I’ve only been here for a few weeks, but I don’t think anyone even knows my name. I’ve already slipped three spots down the batting order. I’ve got no idea what the lyrics to the club song are. And every time I get a hit at training, I hear the faint sound of blokes whispering that one word under their breath: “Yuck.” What am I doing wrong?’ I began, nervously. Nuggsy paused, took a long swig of his Reschs schooner, and reclined languidly into his seat. He scratched his bald head for a moment, seemingly in deep thought, before embarking on the long-winded response that would indeed shape my cricketing future. ‘Listen, bud. You’re a grade cricketer now. And it’s time you learned a little bit about what that means. This isn’t club cricket, “Shires” cricket, or that stupid school shit that you wasted your time on for all those years. This is grade cricket: the highest level of amateur cricket in the world,’ he said with pride. Just for those who don’t already know, I should quickly provide a bit of background on the grade cricket competition. Grade cricket (or ‘Premier cricket’, as it is known in some states/territories) is the level directly below the state competition.  Despite this close proximity to the professional arena, it is nonetheless an amateur competition. Sure, one or two first graders might get paid a little bit under the table, but everyone else must pay a registration fee in order to play. Normally, each club has four to five grades — first grade being the strongest; fifth grade the weakest. Those in first grade enjoy a status that the fifth graders can only dream about. Being a first grader is like being a celebrity to 50 blokes whose names you’ll never know — or never even need to know — unless you end up playing with them after a severe run of poor form (or a serious disciplinary breach). The rest of the club — seconds, thirds, and fourth grade — is basically an assortment of talented youngsters and ageing desperates. The common denominator between the young and old brigade is that they were all once told they were ‘good enough to play for Australia’. In many cases, it was the first and last compliment they ever received — and the reason why they’re still playing. In all cases, it was the worst thing that could have ever happened to them. The ultimate grade cricketer, therefore, will possess the perfect balance of good and not good enough that will haunt them for all of their playing days. All this of course, is something that can only be learned with experience. At this early stage in my grade cricket career, I considered these young players to be ‘cool’ and the older players worthy of my respect. Nuggsy tilted his head to one side as he lit up a cigarette. He took a deep drag, holding it in for what seemed like hours, before launching his head back to expel a thick plume of smoke towards the ceiling. ‘Listen, great man,’ he began. ‘Success in grade cricket has nothing to do with skill, ability, or even results. It’s all about the social ladder, bud. You’ve got the big dogs up top, the peasants down the bottom, and everyone in between is just trying to stay relevant,’ he offered. In many ways, grade cricket social hierarchy bears great similarity to the feudal systems that first appeared in the Middle Ages in Europe — something I’d learned a bit about at high school. As I remembered, kings and monarchs sat at the top, enjoying their pick of the land, women and food. They were the ones who established the rules that everyone had to live under. The barons leased their land from the king; the knights leased their land from the barons; and the knights granted the lowly peasants their land.  The peasants were not allowed to marry, nor could they even leave the manor without permission. Basically, they were the fifth graders of the 8-12th Century.

Freedom's hallowed status is apparent in the willingness to kill and die for it; it is deemed worthy to be purchased in the currency of blood.