Enduring Value

What is the value of anything?  What makes anything valuable or worth pursuing?  What makes something beautiful, treasured, or adored?  In Hebrew it is “ratsah,” which means to be pleased with, delighted in, received favorably.  What a great way to think of value.

Things that are valuable please us.  They help us find what we are looking for.  They give us clarity.  Help.  Hope.  But if only that, a disturbed person looking for trouble might find great “value” at a firearms shop, where he could get what he is looking for - a dangerous weapon.

Value has to be bigger than one individual (who may be wrong, or worse, demented).  Value has to be for the community’s delight, though not necessarily for every single member.  In general value brings some experienced “good” - some tangible expression of prosperity for a group of people.

Conversations about value, then, fit well with those about coveting, which is a desire to have what other people value, and probably justice also, which is a desire for equal access and equity for similar things.  Otherwise “value” becomes another word for selfish desire, or greed.

To drill down, a “free” market is technically equal opportunity for all members of a community, not necessarily equal resources.  To focus only on the un-level playing field is to miss the point that value is something that is delighted in and adored.

The rich may have advantages getting to the market.  But remember: there is no buying out inspiration.  There is no monopoly on good ideas - innovation - great writing - things that bring real value. Inspiration levels the playing field.  More money may attract the brightest, but can it keep the best?

Sooner or later losing one’s soul matters more than making money.  It is the way.

Purity of heart breaks through.  Yes, greedy people prosper, and yes greedy people win.  For a time.  But it is the ones who create real value that last the longest.  Every other form of success is transient.  It is bound to fail.  Eventually.  Selfishness is ultimately unsustainable.     

Real value has transcendence.  A built-in sustainability.  It resonates.  It compels.  It works.  It makes other things better.  More endurable.  More cohesive.  More connective.  Value is ultimately found in that sense of worth, or worthiness, of being worth the time and energy of the community.

One last point, value is not something we can decide ahead of time.  It is not something we “determine” at all.  Think of the things we value.  How did they originate?  Most started with a deep, inward compelling from outside of the self.  Someone followed this deep creative impulse before they knew what it would become.

That’s the beauty of faith.  Action comes first.

One action stirs a reaction.  Those are also not decided ahead of time.  They are experienced.  By the community. Sure, certain “tastemakers” can sway how people react, but the reaction itself comes from a much deeper place.  Deep calls to deep.  Compelled action creates a compelled response.

That’s the beauty of art as shared experience.  We get to take people with us on the journey of that moment.  We invite them to share our insight or revelation, the “play” moment when we first received the gift of inspiration, usually through someone else’s created thing.  Our moment becomes a shared moment. 

And these moments overlap and intertwine and dance together.  They become a whole new thing.  That is value in its purest form.  It allows for those shared moments.  It gets out of the way of itself. 

Value is the ultimately the invitation to experience inspiration.