More of an excerpt than a quote, but it resonates with me:
"Affirming your worth is no easy task. Right now you believe that your worth depends on your behaviour. Metaphorically, you see yourself as a empty vessel that must be filled, drop by drop, with your achievements. You start out essentially worthless, a body that moves and talks. The critic would have you believe that there is no intrinsic value in a life, only a potential for doing something worthwhile, something important.
The truth is that your value is your consciousness, your ability to perceive and experience. The value of a human life is that it exists. You are a complex miracle of creation. You are a person who is trying to live, and that makes you as worthwhile as every other person who is doing the very same thing. Achievement has nothing to do with it. Whatever you do, whatever you contribute should come not from the need to prove your value, but from the natural flow of your aliveness. What you do should come from the drive to fully live, rather than the fight to justify yourself.
Whether you're a researcher unlocking the cure for cancer or a guy sweeping the street, you have known hope and fear, affection and loss, wanting and disappointment. You have looked out at the world and tried to make sense of it, you have coped with the unique set of problems you were born into, you have endured pain. Over the years you've tried many strategies to help you feel better in the face of pain. Some have worked, some haven't. Some have worked short-term, but in the long run brought greater distress. It doesn't matter. You are just trying to live. And in spite of all that is hard in life, you are still trying. This is your worth, your humanness.
Your pain, your hope, your struggle to survive links you to every other human being. We are all just trying to live and we are doing the best we can."
Matthew McKay; Patrick Fanning. Self-Esteem (2000)
