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Personal Musings

Your job title isn’t important

Your job title isn’t important. Your salary, whatever the range. Your house, whatever the size, whatever the contents inside.

Your car, whatever the make and model.

None of that matters when it’s all said and done.

None of it.

And we know this, don’t we?

Yet, many of us act as if these things matter.

What matters are our relationships, the content of our character. If what we did today made a difference.

If we made the world a better place, under our own roof or outside in the world.

Were we a little kinder today than yesterday?

Did we show gratitude and appreciation to another person, or did we stir the pot and create conflict and discord instead?

Were we nice to someone or did we treat them as if they do not feel sadness and hurt much like ourselves?

Is our path noble or is the path we walk filled with images and ideas that place importance on the least important things in life?

“Your family, your friendships, your community—these are the most valuable things a man can have,” begins a hardcore punk song from my youth. While I can’t say the musical composition of this song is for everyone—it most definitely is not—I do find myself coming back to these lines twenty years later in my life with a new appreciation.

What are the most valuable things in your life? Chances are they aren’t things at all.

Thanks for reading.

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

By Jeffrey Pillow

Jeffrey Pillow is an American short story writer, memoirist, and poet. He is the author of The Lady Next Door. His writing has been published in Urge Magazine, The Nervous Breakdown, 16 Blocks, USA Today, Sports Illustrated, TheBody.com, New York Times, Washington Post, and Richmond Times-Dispatch.

He grew up in the small town of Phenix, Virginia, population: 200, and now lives in Charlottesville with his wife, two kids, and a dog named Mozzarella Cheese. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia where he was a Rainey Scholar. This is his blog.

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