Does the Temporary Have Any Worth?

Does the Temporary Have Any Worth?

There have been times when I felt valuable and times when I felt worthless. Alongside this, I have observed people who consider themselves valuable and others who consider themselves worthless. I have witnessed and experienced how “worthiness” and “worthlessness” directly shape the course of a human life. It is common knowledge that material wealth, prestige, and fame are often regarded as valuable, while material poverty, lack of recognition, and anonymity tend to be seen as dull and undesirable—thus, worthless.

Everyone’s measures of value and acceptance differ. These differences shape our lives. For we build our lives upon what we consider valuable, and what is precious to one person may hold no value for another. We see lives in which what one person holds above his head is trampled under another’s feet. What one pursues with passion, another avoids. The things we accept as values become the aims we strive to reach, obtain, preserve, and protect throughout the course of our lives.

Simply put, we can say that our values direct our goals, and our goals shape our way of living. To confirm this, we can look at ourselves, at those around us, and at the figures whose names have endured throughout history. Consider the works, causes, and struggles of those whose names have not been erased from memory across generations. For instance, what makes Sezai Karakoç valuable and gives meaning to his struggle—is it merely his poetic talent, or the values for which he lived? What makes a person’s life and death meaningful and valuable: how he lived, or what he lived for? Let us turn back to ourselves. What are the “values” behind our goals, our efforts, our concerns? What makes us feel valuable or worthless?

Indeed, a significant portion of humanity’s basic motivations and needs revolve around the concept of value. Adding meaning and worth to our existence, our lives, and our deaths is the primary aim and effort of our life journey. The human heart, in love with eternity and with a deep desire to live, stands helpless before a life whose end is death. It must seek, find, and know the essential value that will give meaning to its existence and life. For the thought of disappearing into nothingness is enough to open wounds in the hearts of all whose hearts have not been darkened. Many poets have cried out in their verses over this idea. Countless books have been written—and continue to be written—on how we might find the value of our existence and life in the face of death.

Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—our egos have long convinced us that death is far away from us, perhaps even nonexistent. And so we do not trouble ourselves with such questions. Let writers examine them, let the elderly ponder them, let poets lament them. If someone dies, may God have mercy on them—so be it. Is that how it is? Very well, then, let us not go as far as death. Let us look at today.

As of today, “yesterday”—and all the yesterdays before it—has died. For the one who cannot find meaning in death and sees it only as annihilation, the entire past is dead. It has been lived and has vanished into the darkness of nonexistence. A new day, meanwhile, consists of new seconds, minutes, and hours that are themselves destined to vanish into darkness moment by moment. What we do collapses and disappears; what we say is forgotten; those we love depart; our expectations are always at risk. In one way or another, everything breaks down, wears out, decays, shatters, fades, completes its duration, and disappears. Whether today, yesterday, or tomorrow…

So what value should the human heart—so in love with eternity—place before this transience so that it does not get swept away by the winds of impermanence at every moment? Which value can soothe the pains of our longing for eternity? Which cause can rescue our minds from the darkness of the idea of nothingness? From this perspective, whatever is lasting is valuable. The worth of the temporary is temporary. Therefore, a person must seek the meaning of life within the meaning of death.