Chapter 2 ~ Self-Worth

As soon as your self-worth is tied to how others see you, you’ve built a cage, and locked it from the inside.

Chapter 2

One of the most memorable times on the farm started with a phone call. A guy named Lochie rang me out of the blue. He’d just returned from a trip around Italy and told me he didn’t quite know what he was meant to do with his life. He said he loved food, though, and figured farming might be a good place to start—to explore that love and maybe find something that would not only pay the bills, but also bring some purpose.

At first, I was reluctant. I’d already trained a few people and, honestly, I was just looking for someone who already knew what they were doing. So I told him to come for a week—just to get some experience—and that I could put him in touch with other farmers afterward. But by the end of that week, we hit it off.

The conversation flowed easily, and I quickly realised we were on a similar journey. Both of us were trying to figure out how to orient ourselves in this world. At that point, I thought I had it all worked out.

I remember one early trip we took—probably delivering vegetables—when Lochie asked, “What gives you meaning? What should give us meaning?

Without missing a beat, I told him: “You have to do something noble—something worthwhile. You don’t want to look back at your life and feel like you wasted it. It’s not about making money. That’s not noble.”

I used the word noble because to me it meant something done not for personal gain, but because it’s right—because it has integrity. Society benefits from people who live with noble intentions.

I was so convinced of that back then. Lochie and I had countless conversations trying to test that belief—poking at it, challenging it, seeing if it could really stand. Eventually, we broke it. We shattered it and had to build something new in its place.

I remember another conversation, driving back from Byron Bay after dismantling an old cool room to rebuild it on the farm. We were asking: “Who do we want to be seen as?”

Lochie said, “You know, when people think of a farmer, there’s this respect. Farmers are seen as honest, hard-working, grounded. That’s what I want to embody.”

We both agreed. If we were going to align ourselves with something, let it be values like that. Let it be a set of principles that made life better—not just for us, but for others too.

But looking back now, I think we were still chasing identity. We wanted to be seen as something. There’s nothing wrong with holding good values, but we were deriving meaning from how people perceived farmers. And because that perception was positive, we clung to it.

The truth is, we knew that chasing wealth, fame, or power didn’t satisfy. Sure, society might admire those things, but do people really admire the person—or just the money, the fame, the achievements? We don’t value the human being; we value the thing they’ve attained.

And that’s shallow.

That’s why so many famous people crash when their fame fades. They realise people only valued what they had—not who they were. And worse still, they only valued themselves through that same lens. When the fame disappeared, so did their self-worth. No worth, no meaning, no purpose. And down they spiral.

It’s the same with CEOs. Why do so many climb Everest after retirement? Maybe because no one cares about them anymore now that they’re not generating millions for shareholders. They feel worthless. So they find something else that people can admire them for.

So yes, Lochie and I leaned into the “farmer” identity because it carried virtues we admired. And if I had to choose, I’d still prefer to be valued for being honest and grounded rather than for money or status. At least those traits stick with you till your deathbed.

But still—were people valuing me? Or were they valuing the things I believed in? And if I’m farming to be seen as authentic, am I really being authentic?

That’s the deeper question.

Ultimately, I wanted to be valued just for being me. But why did I need anyone to value me for that to happen? Why couldn’t I value myself?

That’s the core of it. As soon as your self-worth is tied to how others see you, you’ve built a cage—and locked it from the inside.

I don’t think many people escape it. Most of us tie our worth to how others judge us. Why? Maybe it starts in childhood. We’re taught early: behave well, you’re good; behave poorly, you’re bad. And yes, some behaviours are hard to be around. But we confuse behaviour with being.

We’re told: “If you act this way, you’re loveable. If not, you’re not.”

But we’re not our behaviour. We’re something more.

We’re something miraculous. We’re not just humans—we’re the result of cosmic improbability. A speck of stardust, a living mystery born from a Big Bang. We have galaxies reflected in our eyes. We grow like fruit from the tree of the universe.

And that—that—is our worth.

Not what we do. Not how others see us. Just the fact that we are. That we even exist.

Why isn’t that enough?

And yet we tie our value to our work, our identity, our achievements. But when we do that, we lose our freedom. We wrap chains around ourselves—chains made of other people’s opinions, expectations, validations. Chains we can break, sure, but only if we see them.

On that trip back from Byron, we felt like we’d arrived. We thought we’d figured it all out. Farming was the answer. No more searching. Finally we can be content. Nirvana, here we come.

I don’t even know if that feeling lasted the whole drive.

Because the next morning—or the one after—we were back in that void.

That familiar emptiness. That gnawing question: Why do I feel this way again?

So we worked. We got on with it. And like many people, we used work as a distraction. Some people work themselves to the bone just to stop thinking. Like swallowing Valium hour after hour—except the pill is a shovel, a wheelbarrow, a checklist.

But not us. We couldn’t stop questioning, even while we worked.

Sometimes we’d build each other up, reassuring one another that yes, we’re farmers, and that’s enough. That’s meaningful. We’d try to reinforce the bubble, make it stronger.

But we’d always pop it again. We’d jackhammer the beliefs we’d just built. Back into the void we went.

It was exhausting.

And we did that relentlessly for a whole year.

Having nothing to aim at is difficult, building your own image and self worth doesn’t come easily. It feels so much easier to pick a character the world already loves and work hard to embody it.

To become your own character, in your own play, without need for applause—that may be our greatest accomplishment.