Measuring Up

  I have been measuring the wrong things. Physical stuff and money. The world runs on numbers these days.

            I run with people who quibble over a tenth of a mile, shaving seconds off their time, desperate for a PR (a personal record). I run because it feels good and I’m more alive all day. My numbers are pathetic and I don’t care.

            In other ways I’m not as secure. I’m haunted by The Do-er. I have two acres and four buildings, so I go to Home Depot. A banner hangs above the door: HOW DOE-ERS GET MORE DONE, and I think, Abandon hope, all ye others who enter here.

            The Do-er unpacks from a trip the moment she gets home, remodels her bathroom just for fun, drives a car that’s spotless. I berate myself, I think I should be her, except… Except she is not a writer or a photographer or a coach. Her idea of creativity is the right color paint in the bathroom. So why don’t I exorcise her and be myself, end the haunting?

            There’s a joke. What happens if you hire an exorcist and forget to pay him?

            –You get re-possessed.

            I’ll make sure to pay.

            The other bad measure is money. GDP drives our economy even though it thrives on war and illness and destruction. A person’s net worth is figured in dollars, but what about what we give to the world? What about love and art and friendship and happiness?

            If I measure my worth in dollars I am just OK, and just OK is not where I like to live. But…

            I hang a show of my photographs in the studio of a brand new painter friend and we hold an opening on First Thursday. The big gallery walk in Pioneer Square, a huge celebration. I’m an artist in a purple iridescent blouse, greeting my guests. Friends come, friends of all ages from twenty to eighty-four. Friends I’ve known for twenty or thirty years, some I’ve known for three weeks, and even friends of friends. One of them buys a print.

            I come home and my cats run to see me. Aspen rolls on her back and purrs and lets me rub her belly.

            My wealth is in love.

Does this sound sappy? Maybe it is or… Maybe that’s the voice of money talking. “Cold hard cash,” they say. It is cold and hard. It thinks it rules and everything else is fluff.

The management consultant W. Edwards Deming, said, “The most important things are unknown and unknowable.”

They aren’t, though. We do know love and connection, creativity and joy. And they are the most important things.