You Are Valuable

By Miles Patrick Yohnke

© 2015 All Rights Reserved.

Photograph of Miles Patrick Yohnke at age 53 by Marcel Toews

"If people were made of fine china perhaps they would take far better care of themselves."

We are all just a stroke away from being in a nursing home. We talk about what we are going to do with our lives currently. But our lives will be shortened, our quality of life reduced, and our accomplishments lessened if we do not maintain a proper diet with exercise.

In a gym, resistance is used to make one stronger. In life, resistance holds one back. Channel it; work with it, and you can build a new you.

Why is it that people will often put forth more attention and care towards materialistic purchases rather than themselves?

Do we need to purchase a warranty for our bodies and minds so that we will truly take care of all facets of ourselves? We are taught to bring our vehicles in for oil changes and maintenance, to maintain our warranty; to maximize the life of our vehicles, our investment.

We research which oil is best for our engine. We place so much time cleaning, detailing, caring for that purchase. Even in some cases, a real love is placed towards it.

What about us?

Do we place that much care towards ourselves? Do we research or care about what we place in our own engines? Our bodies? Detail ourselves? Our minds?

People often become overweight, as they didn't get the love they so desperately needed as a child. They thought that there was something wrong with them because they didn't get the full attention from their parents.

So they punish themselves needlessly.

We purchase home or tenant insurance, and home security, as a protection from events out of our control. But the idea of going to a gym, buying a gym membership, or taking care of our own being, feels like a burden. Too high a price to pay. And yet we can control the outcome.

Where can I start the change in my life? It always begins with you.

We constantly see children who become lost adults whom never received the full attention they needed from their parents. By parental example, they think materialistic purchases are warranted and have real value and importance.

A father can labour over his prized vehicle. His time can be invested in restoring a vehicle; a vehicle that someone else designed, made, created.

Maintaining his warranty to make him feel complete.

A mother perhaps has a wardrobe of shoes and purses that makes her feel good, although she is insecure. Perhaps their energies would be better directed at the children they made.

Often mothers can collect fine china and store them in valuable wall units to admire and only use on special events (again something that someone else made). It almost seems like we are taught that we aren't as important as something that someone else made or something that we pay for as a purchase.

We make our children. We need to detail them, nurture them. Praise them. To throttle into action, tender loving care for them. This collectible, an elegant advertisement of you. Maintain ourselves and them. Maintain our children. Let us not void their human warranty.

In Canada, where I'm from, we have free health care. A wonderful service. Though sadly, we have far too many people abusing the system. Often they don't even really know they are.

They need the services of many individuals like administrators, nurses, doctors, and require surgeries. All housed within a hospital. The staggering cost is overwhelming. It is a real burden placed on tax payers. All of us.

The people.

When you need the service (if you didn't die from a heart attack or stroke for example) some realize then, why didn't I take better care of myself? Take steps to protect myself? Create a healthy lifestyle (it is never too late to start). Why did I let it come to this?

What often surfaces during extreme acute health issues is a real fear for your own being; validation.

Often we need to purchase that automobile, that house, those clothes, allowing our minds to polish that beautiful lie fed to us by corporate-sponsored media. Are we really taught how valuable we are? Us, just as we are?

Maybe we need to replace that precious fine china, in that special wall unit, with photographs of our children and admire them; this unmistakable labour of craftsmanship, these historic beings. Maybe we need to maintain them. Detail and polish them.

When china breaks, it is not fixable.

We as humans can repair our broken, splintered, sharded past, and truly become collectible. Valuable.

Photograph of Miles Patrick Yohnke by Shaun Salen