How do you weigh up?

Updated: Jan 23

I've been thinking a lot about what makes a thing or a person valuable - how we frame that for ourselves, and for others. I think it's key.

I have never really thought about this before and I'm not quite sure why because I think it underpins all that a person is, says and does. At this precise moment, New Zealand is an exciting place to be: we've done COVID well. We're out of Lockdown and we're transitioning well with Visionweek - a week for Kiwis to talk about the future that we would like to see. It's amazing. But what keeps on coming up again and again is this word "value". As in, what do New Zealanders value, how are we valued and how do we leverage that?

I can't stop thinking about that in very personal terms: what do I value? How am I valued (or what value do others place on me?) and how do I leverage that? It's an amazing, simple how-to guide for a CV, job interview and life plan really.

So I'm thinking about what makes a thing valuable. How does it gain value and grow in value? That is incredibly hard for me to work out.

For me, a task is valuable if it has nearly killed me. Value is directly proportional to effort.

A hike is worthwhile only if I am sweating, stiff and physically exhausted at the end of it. A project is valuable if I cried, rewrote it five times, doubted my ability and almost gave up - or is that just the creative process? I don't know. Any exercise that I do is full-on, tiring and needs a certain fitness level to even take part in it.

Is this just me? My personality? My upbringing? Or my generation? I'm pretty sure the Gen X mentality is a big part of it. And I'm pretty sure that this is why Millennials get such a rough deal sometimes: their life is not blood, sweat and tears; they look horrified at our "go big or go home" rebel yells. And I think we value them less for the lack of effort that they seem to have put into their lives thus far. But why? Why should hard be valued more? Maybe hard could indicate lack of planning or stubbornness?

And I don't think it's got anything to do with resilience. I think when we have had to work that hard to get something done, we may just be too busy to think about 'why' or 'how' or maybe even 'no more'.

Is something valuable just because it is difficult?

I'm really bad at this. I'm really 80's at this. I like to bump into and conquer and blood-sweat-and-tears it. That is not really how I place value on a thing or on others, it's more how I value myself. And that's the hardest bit: I only value myself if I have the scars to prove it.

I hate that. I shall beat myself up about it until things improve!