(From left: Dr. Chris Hartnett, Sahar Sarid, Dr. Kevin Ham, Steven Sacks)
This was originally in the comments area for a post called “What Is Value“. It is that good that it is well worth it’s own post.
Enjoy,
Sahar
(note: In order to have all comments for the original topic in one area, comments on this post are disabled. You can still comment on the original post as well as this one here)
I was looking down on Manhattan and saw billions of dollars worth of real estate but all I could see was the priceless beauty of Central Park. Just the fact that it was not developed makes it priceless, in the midst of such wealth, what people value in real estate and all the things in those apartments. We have the equivalent in Vancouver, Stanley Park. It’s like the Mastercard motto, some things in life are priceless. How much did Priceless.com sell for?
Value is created by need. Sometimes you don’t realize how valuable it is until you lose something. Imagine this. If you had no air to breathe for four minutes, what would you trade for a breath of air? If you lost your eyes, what would you give to get back your vision. Your hearing? Your legs? Your heart?
Then there are values, great ones like honesty, integrity, humbleness. But show me a man who is perfect and flawless, and I will show you God. Even then, there are critics who claim flaws there. And we struggle with our conscience, to do the right thing, to live beyond ourselves. Each person in this world, six billion and counting have different things they value and different needs. And yet, some things are very common, that are able to bind our hearts and work together for a greater cause, beyond our needs.
It’s not tied to money. If you wait until you have lots of money, and most of the time, you spend what you make and so you have very little savings, it will be so difficult to do big things, when you have not been accustomed to doing things on a small scale. Donating $1 when you only have $2 is a lot harder than donating $1,000,000 when you have $2,000,000.
I am not perfect by any means and people can judge me for this based on what they read, but as they say, don’t judge a book by its cover. Do I have faults? Just ask my wife. In my short life, I’ve watched babies die, healthy people die, my own mother die and I’ve watched dozens of children come into this world, including my own. I’ve saved lives and at other times, I felt helpless and just watched people die, as a doctor, as a person, as a father, and as a husband.
Life is full of value as our time in this world is finite. Value each breath, value your dreams, value the people around you, even though they are imperfect. Those are values and that is the most valuable thing in life - life itself.
Life itself is a miracle, greater than anything we could ever know and yet we exchange our lives, our time, in return for a paycheck because we need to provide shelter and food for ourselves and our family. But in our inner self, we long to be fulfilled. We feel good when we make others feel good.
This morning, a little child looked me in the eyes and smiled and said, Good morning. That made my day. Then later in the elevator, this man looked at a picture frame I was carrying and he said, “Very nice picture frame.”? I thought he was mocking me because he was looking at the backside of the picture frame. Then I turned it around. It was a gift from my associate, who had put a picture of me in a frame and I showed him the picture and then he really smiled and said, “An award. Congratulations!”? Just that very morning, I found three $20 bills in the school parking lot and asked a lady if it was hers and she said, “No, but wow, that’s a lot of money.”? I asked my wife to give it to the school office as I thought one person’s gain is another’s loss and I thought about how bad the child who had lost it must have felt.
So we go through life with our experiences, our biases, and we look out for ourselves. But how can we add value to others?
Domains and parked pages? Far from it? Build skyscrapers in Central Park? Develop out all undeveloped land? There is a time and place and we all are limited by the imagination, by resources and mostly by time. There is a lifetime of value that we can create, each day, starting with a smile, with a thought and saying and moving up from there. Let’s look back in five years and look at the value we have created, how we helped others in some way, indirectly or directly.
This is getting a little long winded but my fingers can’t keep up with my thoughts and they come unfiltered. I am still yet young in years, and have much to learn, much to go through, but we stick our necks out there because we want to make a difference to someone. And the more you want to make a difference, the more difficult it becomes, because we are all human and many a times, we err and from these mistakes, we learn and we grow. But inside, we all have value, to someone, somewhere and if we can touch that person, who needs it, that person can touch someone else and who knows, perhaps one of those people will make such a profound difference to a great number of people.
If you had $6 Billion and you gave every person in this world a dollar, people would still ask for more. But if you touch their hearts and you give them hope, show that life is full of value, even in the midst of hardship and poverty, you will start to see a twinkle in their eye. I’ve witnessed this many times doing medical missionary work in Mexico, Poland, Thailand, China, the Philippines as well as here locally in North America. And of course if you can, you help with their physical needs, their health and teach them. In the end, we are all accountable, some say to God, some say to your conscience. We reap what we sow and so we should sow the seeds, for in due time, some will be fruitful and beautiful.
I tell my daughter that she is beautiful but I would like her to be beautiful inside. Yet I buy her books that show outward beauty, because that is what people see. But when they get to know her, they will be more amazed by her inner beauty.
Value life. Life value.
Kevin
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