I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of a person’s “worth” in recent days. Logically, I know it to be axiomatic—we are worth something just by being. But I keep searching for proxies—anything I can use as a metric—to estimate my relative worth.

I tried, for years, to use packets of external validation that were encoded in numeric values—grad point averages or total compensation figures—to calculate my worth and conceptualize my relative standing, but I’ve (finally) begun maturing past this. Though I will continue to optimize for these figures, I now look for other things to determine my worth as a person.

I am much more than these numbers. We all are.

I spent some time mulling over this, discussing it with my therapist and my friends, asking everyone to humor me—look past the fact that our worth is inherent, everyone! just for a second! And I think I have found a new proxy by which to calculate it: by considering the lives we touch within our lifetimes.

We are social creatures, after all.

I keep coming back to this idea. Especially now.

I have been avoiding my reflection (more often than usual) in recent days. every time I stand in front of a mirror, I am forced to stare at a woman whose face has been marred by the vestiges of a recently severed connection—the aftermath of a saccharine affair that swept me off my feet and then threw me to the ground very suddenly. I have become an affront to my own eyes.

I cringe now when I see myself. Not just at the unsightliness of my skin reacting to the pills that I had happily ingested the mornings after our encounters, but also at the thought that in the end, my body, being that of a woman’s, must keep a ledger of our kindlings, while his remains unscathed, and he is able to walk away, completely unaffected. I am left with a constant, painful reminder of the relationship and its sudden demise, and he is able to forget me and our connection immediately.

The numbers in my brokerage accounts, the diplomas hanging on my wall, the awards that line my bookshelves at home—they are all superficial things. I couldn’t cower behind them when I crawled into bed every evening and was confronted with the truth.

What am I worth if I am so easily forgotten? I didn’t like the answer to this question.

This idea—my relative worthlessness—has been weighing on my chest for weeks. It remained in the back of my mind during the day, and it made my heart race when I shut my eyes at night.

I was feeling particularly encumbered by this thought yesterday night, when my plans to meet some of my closest friends unraveled. it was a quiet evaporation of a social commitment as life got in the way for everyone. The normal friction of adult life.

My apartment, normally my sanctum, suddenly felt too big. too quiet.

I needed to get out.

I resolved to bundle up and stroll through central park, the tip of which is just a short walk from my apartment.

On my way over, I encountered a woman with a cart, full of groceries, that had gotten caught in a mound of snow by an intersection. As I grew closer, I anchored myself on the ice and wordlessly began tugging the cart from the front while she pushed from the back. the wheels rolled onto the pavement in seconds. She looked up at me for the first time, and I that noticed her was face streaked with tears. She smiled. I smiled back. The pedestrian walk sign lit up, and I walked away.

Tears began to well up in my own eyes.

For days, I had spent my nights trying to come to terms with the insignificance of my own existence. I kept turning the question of my worth over and over until it felt sharp. If I were still tallying—still looking for something to measure—there would have been nothing to log from that exchange. No name. No memory. No permanence.

But there was still something meaningful in that interaction.

I began to understand, in my own distorted way, the concept of inherent value.

I’m writing this from my hometown. I ran here, to my family, at the tail end of a week that I’ve felt the loneliest I’ve felt in years.

I still miss my friends dearly. I am still grasping for a semblance of this feeling of worthiness that originates outside of my material accomplishments.

But I am hopeful.

I have plans to share a meal with two of my dearest friends in the evening today.

And tomorrow, I will keep trying to build a life that is porous—to show up, to notice, to love without wanting permanence in return.

Maybe worth is not something we secure or preserve. Maybe it is something we practice, again and again, even when no one is keeping score.

Anyway, the tiramisu was okay. I thought the cake could’ve soaked a bit more—it was rather dry. And the cookie was alright. Could’ve used more butter though.