22 October: Value

Day 22 of Kate Motaung's October 2015 edition of 31 days of free unedited writes.

Thursday 22 October: Value

Worth was our word last Sunday. I'll logically assume worth is from the German; value from Latin.

What's this to you? Name something of equivalent worth for you—that'll explain how much you value it. Stored value gift card, pre-paid credit card. Value added purse at the racetrack.

I got a degree in economics because I couldn't start seminary without learning a lot about money, finance, the exchange of goods, and the psychological phenom of the stock market. The circulation of money everywhere includes a strong psychological component. Economics literally is the law of the household; "household" technically begins with a single individual, and ultimately extends to the whole inhabited world: the ecumenopolis, the city that fills the planet. In the retail world of clothing, household goods, vehicles, and assorted miscellany, one person doesn't not always "value" a particular object to the same degree another person does. In many ways it's cultural, in other ways it relates to income and/or cash on hand along with true necessities.

After studying economics, I went to seminary and studied theology, the word about the Divine, the discipline that articulates ultimate values that can't be bought or sold with ordinary transactional legal tender. Learning the scriptures of the church and the stories of God's people help us learn what God ultimately values, and makes us more aware of what we need to learn to value most, as God's people created in God's image.

Time is money, and often people place a dollar or pound or euro *value* on their labor—or sometimes on their non-workplace time. Some non-profit organizations have a "time-dollar" program that helps clients learn to earn. Stored value of some sort, I'd say.