“Effort” is rarely the thing that is done. It is the proof of value. It is the receipt the personality produces so that success or failure can be justified. If it succeeds, effort proves deserving. If it fails, effort proves worthiness through struggle. If it is acknowledged, there is elation and gratification. If it is not, there is a sense of disappointment, disillusionment, and “not feeling seen”. Either way, effort becomes a definition. It becomes a measure of worth.

But worth that is measured is also negotiable. The moment worth becomes negotiable, the field is then negotiation. Value is sorted. Value is tested. And once a human being senses a value-sort, it becomes a bargaining chip. This often happens unconsciously. Yet the atmosphere changes immediately: what could have been simple movement becomes transaction. The act is now priced.

This is what I will call the burden of self worth: the compulsion to translate movement into measured proof. The compulsion to narrate alignment as labour. The compulsion to make the self legible through strain, so that the self can be validated, defended, excused, or admired. This is also the language of society — the language of “work” as extraction of labour.

When one says “perform”, it does not necessarily mean the action is not genuine, for all forms emanate from truth even when they are shrouded in illusion. The “performance” is the “play” with descriptions out of which self-definitions, personal identity, and belief systems are shaped. The one who “works hard” to achieve his or her goal only introduces the “effort” as description before or after the fact, but not in the fact of the moment. That description is a pre- or post-measurement that underscores transactional acts. Yet this very introduction of description lays bare something much more oblique: the illusion that self-worth is negotiable, and therefore prone to objectification and commodification. Effort is then the proof of worth or lack thereof.

One might then ask: what about those daunting circumstances that are both core and contour of everyday reality? Is effort not required to surmount challenges or realise one’s dream?

The appropriate word is exertion. Exertion is already implied in necessary movement. In fact, necessary movement is exertion. Think of it as the pressure of incarnation from formlessness into form. However, when exertion needs to be named as value, then it is effort — and thus a ledger of self-worth. Then there is proof, a receipt. Where there is a receipt, there is a ledger. The self becomes a ledger. Action is no longer “force as expression”, but rather an entry into the ledger of self — the inscription of identity. The “me”.

An action that has effort, and thus motive, is one that seeks to enshrine the “doer” with ownership. It’s an inversion of agency in that it moves from external description (what meets the eye or societal evaluation) to internal prescription (that which imposes). Here, the expressive nature of the inward universe is appropriated by the descriptive language of form. Ironically, this does not lead to the recognition of one’s self-worth, but rather entangles and burdens it. The burden — that weighty heaviness — is “effort”.

Effortlessness, in this light, is immeasurable worthiness. Unconditional worthiness is weightless. In that disposition, there is no value to measure and no worth to negotiate. There is simply movement of alignment — necessary movement. It does not need acknowledgment. It does not need to be understood. It will operate regardless because movement exerts pressure.

It is truth that needn’t be told for it to hold.

In the same vein, motive is not reason. Reason arises as a natural consequence of necessary movement that stays faithful to the fact of the moment. Motive, on the other hand, is the handmaiden of “effort” as description of worth. Where there is effort, there is motive as the propellant of action. Reason, on the other hand, is harmonious weaving out of the truth-of-the-moment. It needs no explanation whatsoever, even when misunderstood. And because it needs no explanation, no justification, it is void of motive. Where there is no motive, there is effortlessness.

And this is where non-identification becomes less elusive: when action no longer carries the demand to prove. When speech no longer carries the demand to be received. When the external remains informative rather than prescriptive. When what is done is not turned into an object, not turned into a story, not turned into currency, and where the self does not become the centre of relation.

Thus, action is not without reason. It is without motive. It is not performed for a measure of worth. It is simply the coherent movement of being — and in that coherence, there is “all-centredness”.