What I know about: value.

Dispatches from the interior world.

Photo by Marija Zaric on Unsplash

I often repeat to people that cost and value are not the same thing. I say this as many times as I can, especially as someone who was once fixated on the material because I felt I needed to be.

What I know about value is that it has very little to do with cost.

Cost is a number; value is a feeling.

Cost is a transaction; value is an experience.

Cost is what something takes from you; value is what something gives back.

I’ve found that most people I know confuse the two because numbers feel safer than emotions. It’s easier to measure a price than to admit what something means to us emotionally. It’s easier to say “too expensive” than “I’m afraid I’m not worthy of wanting this.” It’s also easier to hide behind arithmetic than to tell the truth about longing.

What I know about value is that it reveals you. The things you value, such as time, tenderness, beauty, competence, loyalty, intelligence, softness, and presence, tell the story of who you’ve been in the past and who you’re becoming in the present. They show what you’re hungry for, what you’re healing from, what you’re learning to claim for yourself or for others, and what you want to be known for in the future or when you’re gone. Value, in it's most foundational sense, is autobiographical.

There are people who find value in material possessions. That’s not something that you or I should judge harshly, though. Sometimes an object is the first thing that makes a person feel anchored, or proud, or safe. I don't begrudge anyone for wanting to be pleased they can finally afford a new designer bag. Sometimes it’s the only thing in their life that doesn’t leave. Sometimes, it’s a way for them to show the world that they belong, finally, and they no longer have to fight for acceptance. What I’ve learned slowly, and often painfully, is that value isn’t really about the object at all. It’s about what the object represents - usually, a version of themselves they’re trying to grow into.

I know that value isn’t rational, either, and it doesn’t have to be to anyone else. As Antoine de Saint‑Exupéry wrote in ‘The Little Prince’: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” Value lives in the interior world where meaning is made, not measured, and we’re all trying to make meaning and sense out of life.

I know, too, that value is often misunderstood by people who live defensively. They think value is indulgence or extravagance, and at the extreme, a sign of weakness, but value is none of those things. I believe that value is a signifier of alignment and the recognition that something, whether it be a person, a moment, a choice, or a way of living, brings you back to yourself.

Cost is external. Value is internal.

Cost is what the world tells you something is worth, whereas value is what your life tells you something is worth.

And here’s the part that feels hardest to admit: sometimes the things with the highest value cost you nothing at all. It could be a conversation that steadies you. I find it in a person who sees you clearly. For someone else, it’s a morning that feels like a beginning or a decision that feels like relief. I like to think of it as a truth that feels like home.

Value is emotional. It’s relational. It’s human.

What I know most of all is this: when you stop organising your life around cost and start organising it around value, everything changes. Shrinking stops. Apologising stops. Bargaining with your own worth stops.

Living begins instead.