Profit and Value

There was a time when having no other means of earning a living I took a job delivering newspapers to people who lived far from any town or city. I would go into the city very early each morning to a warehouse to pick up stacks of newspapers before setting out to drive a hundred miles of obscure back roads while throwing papers from the window of my car at the appointed places.

Though it cost the newspaper more money to pay me to deliver those papers than they made on the subscription costs they felt it profited them to provide a value to their customers such that everyone no matter where they lived would be provided with a paper should they desire it.

So it came to be that I was driving a country road miles from any farm or house when I thought I saw a bundle of clothes lying beside the road near a guard rail. It was so dark the headlights enjoyed playing tricks on my eyes. When I got closer I could see there was a body inside the clothes. As I got closer still I slowed down. I could tell by the motionlessness of the body that the man no longer breathed.

When the police arrived they could find no identification on the body. When I had convinced them that I didn’t hit him with my car I asked the officers how they went about dealing with a tragedy like this. They said the body would be kept at the morgue for a predetermined time. If they couldn’t discover his name they of course wouldn’t be able to notify any next of kin. The body would then be cremated and the ashes stored in an iron box in the basement at the crematorium should the DNA samples that were taken ever provide a match.

I felt very sad that the man had no one looking out for him. I wondered how he had ended up so far away from everyone and everything. I thought perhaps he was a drunken derelict whose heart finally gave out but I had no real reason to think this other than the strangeness of it all. I couldn’t understand what a sane man would be doing way out there yet I was out there too.

I value being alone but I profit by my associations with others. Alone I am able to write but only by allowing others to read my words do I find confirmation in the stories I so laboriously set down each night.

I read tales about people who die alone and aren’t found for months, sometimes years. One lady in Los Angeles used to be somebody, an actress or some such nonsense, somebody important. One day she just dropped out of her life and no one missed her.

All her old friends acted as if they were shocked when the authorities finally found her mummified body. I suppose the old girl stopped being of value to her acquaintances. Perhaps they could no longer profit by associating with her so they stopped.

The story went on about what a personable character she had once been. It described the real estate empire she had built after her acting career dried up. I couldn’t help but wonder how on earth it took so long for anyone to notice she wasn’t around anymore. How long does it take a body to mummify? It must take years.

I imagine the same fate awaiting me. One day I will just stop showing up and no one will notice. Their lives will go on. Perhaps once in a while someone might wonder whatever happened to the old guy who used to work at delivering their paper. But they’ll soon find something else to think about and I’ll be forgotten again.

Sitting quietly staring at a mountain spring as its waters rise and overflow I understand it does nothing. The spring acts naturally. I understand I need not cultivate my virtue for nothing evades its influence. Like the sun and the moon, my virtue shines forth of its own accord. Would it profit me to gain the world were I to lose the value of virtue?

At times I am the most isolated person you will ever meet. I have no phone, not even a cell. If someone desires to contact me they must do so via email. Odds are I will not answer them anyway. I have no friends. What family I have are scattered about the country. We haven’t spoken in years.

I didn’t used to be like this, you know. I was part of something, once. I was married. I had children. I had values. People profited from knowing me. Gradually all that dropped away, not suddenly and all at once, of course, but bit by bit. I saw it go, every little part of me that I left behind. In the end, I valued my freedom over the profit that society offered. So now I am alone.

I have forgotten my service to others as they have no doubt forgotten their service to me. Yet this should not be counted as an evil. What they have forgotten is but my old self. What cannot be forgotten remains with me.

I will always be like this unless I find my way back to society. Since I value the mystery I seek out the silence of deep mountains and green swamps rather than the easy banter of good friends. Everyone else finds value in their interactions with others. I forego the value to let go of desire.

Value is ill-defined.

Why is value ill-defined?

In science, value is seen as vague and subjective. Science profits from the objective. In religion, value is seen as vague and belonging to the soul, not to the world. Religion profits from the world. In art, value is seen as vague and subject to multiple meanings. Art profits from the definitive.

But there is nothing vague about value.

Life and death are great and profound considerations yet they can make no change in their true nature, how much less can profit and value do so? The more I give to others the more I have. I occupy the lowest positions without being distressed by them.

Springtime makes no demands upon winter, always content to follow in its wake. Because the seasons keep their order the farmer marks valuable planting time on the calendar and so profits from it.

The many spokes around a wheel’s hub allow me to roll down the road and yet they have no value without the empty center hole through which the axle is affixed.

When the carpenter shapes the boards into a coffin to hold the dead it is the empty space within that wood that makes it valuable.

When I build the house I find I must cut empty holes to serve as doors and windows otherwise I cannot enter and the house is merely a casket without value.

So profit comes from the shape of what is, but value comes from what is not.