It was my first impression that getting a degree, job, and married were part of me being able to fit in with the rest of society. But as I began to look around, it was more of the shiny things that appealed to me, like the nice car and the big house.

Philosophical Engineering

When my mentor Dan asked me what the word “value” meant to me, I first responded in a somewhat defensive manner, that value was what something was worth in dollars; the nice car or a big house with a pool. I thought people with great wealth, had a lot of value, and would feel jealous and in some way, inferior. And I would typically compare myself to this meaning of value, based on the size of my paycheck and shiny things I could buy.

However, as Dan showed me, the word value means more than what something is worth in dollars. He compared it to the roots of a tree that produce the fruits in life. Because it wasn’t about the shiny decorations you could put on your Christmas tree every year: the new car, that new pool, or big vacation house by the beach. It wasn’t the idea of steady paychecks or higher degrees to measure oneself by, but rather rooted in what Dan considered the first meaning of the word value; the standards for which someone is to live their life.