Varying Value

I know I've blogged about this before, but better, but when he was young, Benjamin Franklin bought a whistle. He paid a decent amount of money for it, four pennies, if I recall correctly, but he really loved that whistle, and he had a lot of fun with it. But then he learned that he had paid far more than the whistle actually cost, and he felt cheated and upset. Yet, this proved to be a valuable lesson for him, and it probably saved him from overpaying many times thereafter.

At first, I think I concluded that the value of the whistle didn't change, but I think it actually did. Value is subjective. If something has great value to us, then it has great value, at least to us. And if we don't value something, then it doesn't have value to us. Things are "worth" whatever they're selling for. If we're willing to pay a lot to get something, and we'd have to be paid a lot to be willing to give it up, then it has great value to us, regardless of whatever value others place on it. And if we'll not willing to pay much for something, or if we're willing to sell it for cheap, then it isn't worth very much to us, even if others value it highly.

What's great about this is that means that we're as rich as we want to be. We can look at the blessings in our lives, think about how much we'd have to be paid in order to be willing to sell it, and consider the fact that we have blessings that we wouldn't sell for all the world, and that makes us very rich indeed.

I'm grateful for that which I have, and I value it highly, and for that reason, I believe that I am very richly blessed.