Dear LonelyWithYou,

I am sorry you are experiencing what you have described. I have experienced that too.

When one is going to put oneself on trial, it is important that one have not only a prosecutor, judge and jury but also a defense attorney. Otherwise the trial cannot be fair. A trial without a defense attorney is not only unfair and unjust to oneself, it is also unfair to fairness and unjust to justice.

There must be thousands and thousands of little and big things about you that are deserving of appreciation. In your whole life, you have undoubtedly done thousands of little and big acts of bravery, daring, intelligence, beauty and kindness.

Sometimes when people are feeling bad they compare themselves only to those who seem to be doing better at this or that. But to fair one has to compare oneself to those who appear to be doing worse.

Once a girl told me she was "bad" and "worthless" because she did not get straight A's on her report card. Now there have been a couple of individuals in the last 100 years who caused the destruction of tens of millions of men, women and children through campaigns of forced starvation and genocide. So I asked this girl: "Have you caused the destruction of tens of millions of people?" No. "Millions of people?" No. "Hundreds of thousands of people?" No. "Have you caused the destruction of tens of thousands of people or hundreds of people?" No.
So realistically speaking, how bad are you really, I asked this girl.

We all stumble and fall, make mistakes, fail at things, but it is important to keep perspective through all this. How does this person's "failure" compare to the failure which resulted in tens of millions of people being destroyed in concentration camps?

Self-worth is not something one has to earn or prove. It is based on a fact, the fact that one is an absolutely unique human person who will never be repeated in all of time, history and eternity. This "uniqueness" is based on one's being. It is intrinsic to a person.

An analogy to this is the idea of royalty. A person in a royal household is born to be a prince or princess. This dignity is not something they need to acquire nor can it be taken from them. As a prince or princess they may have all kinds of successes, losses, gains, failures, rises and falls. But none of this takes away from the fact that such persons are royalty. Now royalty is a cultural creation. You on the other hand are an absolutely unique human being and this is the basis of your inalienable dignity and worth.

So maybe this might help you. If you are going to place yourself on trial, mentally speaking, perhaps it would be truer and fairer if you have not only a judge, jury and prosecutor, but also an advocate.

I'm not sure this would be helpful, but I thought I would at least mention it to you as something to give consideration to.

I wish you only the best!

Sincerely yours, Yao Wen