The 365 Commitment

Perceived Value

Pondering important things today. Was considering this question. I really started to think through of all my physical things, what is the most precious? What is the most valuable to me? What do I add considerable value to? Of course we all go to the intangible things. My family, my faith, my relationships. However, that is not the thought I want to take this blog. Suspend the non-tangible thing for a moment and think of just the material. For me there are a few things that I could think of. I still have a stuffed animal that I had as a child. It is in a box in the garage. How much value to I attribute to that? I have a billiards table given to me by my father/grandfather when I turned 16. That is pretty important to me. There is spiral bound notebook that I bought at a grocery store for 39 cents that I started a journal in when I was 19. That is probably one of the single most valuable objects that I own. I attribute significant value with that particular item. There are many other things. Things that remind me of my younger days, remind me of my wife, my children, of relatives that have passed on. All of this is value.

This led me to this thought. Money does not actually store value. Goods and services actually store value. I bought a pair of running shoes today for $140. The shoes are going to provide me with a perceived value, I willingly gave money for that in exchange for the value that I will get for the running shoes. Those shoes will store that value and I will continue to get value out of them until they wear out. At that point they will no longer have value and I will discard them. Objects and things gain value by being produced and their production results in a use case that others will perceive as valuable, enough so that they will give you money or other form of barter in exchange.

So I am curious about this concept. What do we produce in our lives, in our jobs, or in our situations that produce value in things that we can then transfer to others for money? Not sure where I am going with this thought, but I suspect there maybe a secret here that I am stumbling around that I will have to ponder tomorrow as I run in my new shoes.

Guy Reams

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