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If you are useful, it doesn't mean you are valued

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Re: If you are useful, it doesn't mean you are valued

#371
post #88
post #74

Ah yes, the eternal quest for "feeling valued" at work — as if we're all in a corporate therapy session instead of just here to solve problems, get paid, and go home. American companies love inventing emotional debt as a substitute for job security. Maybe next time I get laid off, they’ll throw in a heartfelt Slack emoji to ease the blow.

If we can’t fantasize at something that’s supposed to take a third of our day to day, man, that’s depressing. I do understand that we need to be practical and do the job and get paid, but at some point one wakes up and wonders what the hell is one living for. Work is usually the last thing on my list, but I quickly wake up again and lick mister dollar’s ass because I need money for food. You can manage to twist the m…

That's part of the problem with American culture — everything revolves around having more: more stuff, more money, more status. You're so bound to accumulation that you forget there's a different kind of richness in having less. Less to worry about, less to maintain, less to chase.

You could be fruitful and genuinely happy by simplifying, by letting go of this obsession with ownership and control. But instead, life becomes a constant cycle of buying, upgrading, storing, insuring, and eventually throwing away. It’s exhausting, and it never really fills the void.

You’ve been sold the idea that freedom means choice — but only if you can afford it. Meanwhile, the more you have, the more you owe: in time, energy, attention. And what gets lost in all this is the space to just be — to create, to connect, to enjoy what’s already around you.

Happiness doesn’t come from what you own. It comes from how lightly you carry your life. And somewhere along the way, that got forgotten.

Re: If you are useful, it doesn't mean you are valued

#372
post #56
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Valued = useful + hard to find. I agree, but I think it slightly differently, Valued = useful + hard to replace. How difficult is to be replaced by some other human or a machine.

I'll add one more to this, "Pleasant personality". If you have are difficult to be with, you will be miserable and so will others around you, leaving you with very little or no allies. So new formula: Valued = Useful + hard to find + easy to work with

"Easy to work with" is a wide requirement. It's harder to find.

But we can compare how far "easy to work with" goes in a more balanced scenario:

You're hiring for a critical rare skill. _Only two_ candidates were seriously considered, and you hired them both.

One of them delivers for the skill you hired (useful), but is not easy to work with.

One of them does not deliver for the skill you hired (useless), but is easy to work with.

So, it doesn't matter what your definition of "easy to work with" is in this scenario. It justs matters that whatever it is, it's not related to usefulness (so you can't get away with "but being useful makes you easy to work with").

Who would you lay off if your bills were depending on those guys?

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