Value

 It’s hard to remember to assign a mental value for everything in your life.  Mostly this is true on a daily basis – for example it’s easy to remember how giddy and excited you can be after something successful.  A great first date, finishing a project, and more create instant mental value.  You promise yourself you’ll always remember exactly how you feel at some specific instant in time.

We commonly do the same thing when faced with the possibility or actuality of losing someone.  We swear to that we’ll always remember the times we had together, the look on their face, the smell of their hair, and a million other things.  Sometimes we think we’ll actually be able to remember all of this, but most of the time we’re just telling ourselves this because we feel it is the right thing to do.  That isn’t to say that the thought is flawed in some manner, only that over time the mental value we assign to something tends to decrease.

We probably all have exceptions to this, but for a vast majority of events this is true.  I remember precious little about ex-girlfriends, other friends that I don’t see, and a million other things, but the death of a good friend continues to be something I think about on at least a weekly basis.  I’m able to accurately recall many of the times we spent together shortly before he died.  Everything from his emotions, to the mannerisms he used to explain things.  Maybe it was because I knew his death was likely eminent, but anything remotely profound he said has had a lasting impression.  That’s mental value.

So what about the things we don’t even think about assigning mental value to until we’ve already lost them?  What about the things we don’t realize created value until we realize we’ve lost them?  Talk about instant depression!  One day you think things are going pretty smoothly, and the next you realize that the situation you thought was acceptable is actually a drain.  Suddenly you want a change, but for whatever reason you’re unable to make it.  Instead you have to take the person, event, or thing that made you realize the short coming in your life and attempt to leverage it into mental value.

The first thing you do is promise yourself you won’t overlook these types of things again in the future.  Well – we covered that above.  It’s a nice notion, but not a practical reality.  Maybe you make some sort of change in your daily life.  This certainly works for a while – as long as you’re able to stay intently focused on what you’re trying to accomplish.  Goals are a powerful tool for this as long as you can keep them in front of you.  Any other number of ideas probably work as well – for a while.

Eventually we sink back into our old ways.  We let the mental value of something slip away until the next event.  Suddenly we realize the value of the last thing that happened.  What if we’d worked harder to extend, remember, or treasure it… would things be different?