Value vs Worth

value: 1. relative worth, merit, or importance: the value of a college education; the value of a queen in chess (Dictionary.com)

as opposed to

worth: 4. excellence of character or quality as commanding esteem: women of worth.
5. usefulness or importance, as to the world, to a person, or for a purpose: Your worth to the world is inestimable.
6. value, as in money.

The Shrink and I debated today whether a person's value can be changed and/or changed by others. The comparison was how I value myself as opposed to how I value my children. During our discussion, I remained undecided and mostly listened to his thoughts and tried to process my own. If I understood correctly, it is his view that everyone is born with inherent value and the only way to reduce our value is to deliberately hurt other people or to believe it when others tell you you have less value.

I thought about this a lot. Then some more. And then a little bit more. In my head, I decided that there is a difference between value and worth, even though the above definitions would indicate they are basically synonyms. Here are my thoughts...

Value is the inherent worth a person has just by being a person. No one has to earn value. No one's value can increase or decrease. Even the most sadistic and evil person has the same inherent value as the holiest of saints. I guess that I see a person's value as the unconditional love that God has for all of us. Just like there is nothing my children can do to make me love them any more or any less, there is nothing we, as humans, can do to make God love us any more or less - and that is our value.

Worth, on the other hand, is how much we influence the world around us for better or worse. As a person contributes positively to the world, their worth increases. As they do damage, it decreases. If they fail to do good where they had the ability and opportunity, it decreases their worth. If they do their absolute best and fail to make a change, their worth increases. Intentions matter in the arena of worth, they matter a lot. Results matter as well.

So I think that a person's worth is a fluid thing. Someone who has done truly terrible things can make up for it and rebuild their worth. Conversely, someone who did great things can destroy it all. It is also dependent on perspective. A person may see themselves at a higher or lower worth than someone else. And different people may see the person with varying levels of worth. Even looking at the same objective facts, different subjective worths can be assigned based on the individual perceptions of each fact.

I guess that means the short answer, in my view, is that value is who we are and worth is what we do...