I think wondering if your work is good, rather than if it is itself, can be a roundabout way of wondering if you are good — worthy of basic love — and that can lead to self-hatred, which poisons the creative process and every other part of life. Now I believe that, if thinking about legacy is ever useful, it’s as the idea of leaving other people a blueprint for living truthfully.
Our current state of affairs is not an all-or-nothing approach, and the implications are far more complex and layered. The nation is grappling with another severe issue at hand - the mental health repercussions of the pandemic, and the downplayed but widened disparity gap.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about those born into poverty. If having an unproductive work day releases short-term effects of stress and anxiety, imagine the long-term, depleting effects of those born into a lifelong trajectory of an endless series of undesirable events and circumstances that are difficult, if not impossible, to mitigate. Stress and anxiety from poverty isn’t entirely attributed to a lack of material substances or monetary value. Instead, it’s a constant coping mechanism - the human body struggling to survive on the bare minimum - while dealing with the ramifications of feelings of inadequacy and habitual/societal inequality. Not just being poor, but feeling poor, in a dog-eat-dog, capitalist society that naturally thrives on money and power, and mercilessly ties an individual’s worth and value to socioeconomic status, beauty, and competence.
To put things into perspective, I think about the way I feel after a day lacking normal human interaction and support, which is common in our current COVID era. At our core, we all want to find purpose and be a valuable contributor to society - this is something I firmly believe. In an impoverished society, an immense lack of “self worth” factors such as socioeconomic status, hierarchy, and all-around support is not a short-term effect, but a constant fight-or-flight response battle, subsequently leading to a permanent downward spiral of impairments to cognitive ability and poor physical health. If I’m struggling to fight brain fog from lack of human interaction, or equating unproductivity to self-worth, how can we help those with a lower socioeconomic status be better, or provide them with the needed support to have the mental strength and physical health to be better?