Value
Six days ago, it was my mum’s first introduction to Kabbalah. We arrived a little late, and only a few seats were left. We ended up near the corner of the room, at a sparsely populated table with two other girls and a man in a wheelchair. In the middle of the table was a small sign: 16 - Peter. I assumed the man was our mentor.
He looked to be in his early fifties, with a salt-and-pepper beard and a good head of hair. His hands rested in a spastic posture, and because his head drooped slightly, he had to push his glasses back into place with the back of his wrist. I suspected he had cerebral palsy.
Peter was a good mentor. He brought everyone into the conversation with ease and was especially welcoming towards my mum. Nothing about the way he taught felt remarkable in the dramatic sense, it was steady and engaged. It felt normal, in the best way.
As we were leaving the Kabbalah Centre, my mum mentioned, almost offhandedly:
He doesn’t have many years left. There’s something noble about him doing this at the end of his life.
That sentence stayed with me. On the drive home, it kept resurfacing, and the more I turned it over, the less sense it made.
In my ears, it transformed Peter’s life into a final act, as though the meaning of what he was doing had suddenly intensified because of its supposed proximity to death.
But Peter isn’t teaching Kabbalah because he’s dying.
He’s teaching Kabbalah because that’s what he does.
By extension, his nobility doesn’t come from tragedy, limitation, or scarcity of time. It comes from something quieter: the fact that he is simply, steadily, being who he is.
What unsettled me wasn’t admiration itself, but the logic beneath it. I don’t like a worldview in which value becomes conditional on suffering or scarcity. Do we need urgency, tragedy, or an ending for life to matter?
There is something uncomfortable about how often suffering is retroactively rewarded with meaning, as though we assign extra value to those who have endured hardship in order to justify what they’ve been through. If someone has suffered, we feel compelled to say it made them stronger, or deeper, or more inspiring. Otherwise, the suffering remains arbitrary, and for many people, that is unbearable.
I think I refuse that move. I refuse to let injustice be justified after the fact.
Value, as I see it, is a story humans tell to orient themselves. These stories can be useful, comforting, even motivating, but they can also mislead. Especially when they are used to justify suffering, soothe guilt, or make randomness feel fair.
Looking back, I think I heard something very human in my mum’s comment, emerging from an otherwise spiritually reflective body. Many people need value to be real because it helps them tolerate injustice and gives shape to their fear of death.
So why do I care?
Even if value isn’t real to me, preference is. Interest is. Curiosity is. Singularity is. I want to do things other people can’t, even if no one ever knows. This isn’t about worth or recognition. It’s about aliveness.
No moral scorekeeping.
No compensatory praise.
Just people, moving through life, doing what they do.