Neither use nor ornament

I don’t know when the phrase ‘neither use nor ornament’ entered my awareness, but it was early on, and applied to me. The first sense of my appearance I had, was the description that I am ‘funny looking’ and I have understood for most of my life that as I am not ornamental, I had better throw everything I have into being useful. It’s been a life defining sort of phrase.

The idea that things should either be useful to us, or visually pleasing, not only informs many human interactions, but is central to the relationship we westerners have with the natural world. We prioritise the pretty things, the charming and the lovely, and we ask what the point of wasps is. Thus to be neither use nor ornament, is by this measure, to be nothing at all.

I wonder sometimes, how different my life would have been if I’d grown up feeling good enough, innately worthy of love, and confident of my place in the world. I would have been an entirely different person, I would have made different choices, expected better treatment, walked away from things that did me no good, I suspect. I would have been much happier, and maybe defaulted to thinking that mattered.

What happens to our relationship with the world when we let go over the narrow constraints we so often have around valuing? When we stop demanding to know the utility and the cost, and start thinking about a much broader kind of worth. When simply existing becomes a valid form of worth, to be respected and taken seriously. The environmental implications of that would be huge. So would the political consequences, because this whole language around who is undeserving would simply go away.

Speaking as something that has understood itself to be neither use nor ornament, doing away with those measures would make the world a kinder place, and, I think, a better one.