Countless, Worthless, Priceless Treasures

I have the good fortune to be married to a woman who understand the intrinsic value of things. She sees the beauty and wonder that God scatters upon the path in front of her, and takes the time to stop and enjoy it, living so much more in the moment than me. One of her favorite pastimes is looking for sea glass and shells when we’re walking on the beach. To her, a piece of polished sea glass is a precious stone. Precious is, after all, in the eye of the beholder. Consequently, we have quite a collection of various detritus from a host of favorite shorelines. That’s just fine with me, because she gets more joy from a rare and perfect piece of sea glass than many other people seem to derive from diamonds or emeralds. I’m not saying that she doesn’t deserve those as well, yet her perspective provides a commentary on how we assign value to the other things in our lives. The richest people aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest jewels. Rather, they are the ones with beautiful memories and various keepsakes that remind them of those memories. That’s what sea glass is to us. Not so much precious stones as touch stones. This also begs the question of what we fill our lives with … and why? In the meantime, I’ll keep hauling home the pockets full of sandy treasure that my beloved finds joy in collecting. After all, it’s not just about the glass. I think she’s actually collecting joy … and that is a treasure indeed.   

 Countless, Worthless, Priceless Treasures

Wherever the water kisses

The sand, you’ll find her there

Wandering happily down the shore

Wet feet and windblown hair

Oblivious to tide and time

As the lazy hours pass

She scours the shore for shiny stones

And odd pieces of sea glass

Tucking the treasures in her pocket

Whenever they appear

And wandering down the sunlit shore

As she has throughout the years

So we have a vast collection

Of such trinkets from the shore

Countless, worthless, priceless treasures

That she collects and she adores

And why not, we know so many folks

Who pay a fortune for the things

That they think will make them happy

Yet no greater pleasure bring

Perhaps the wisest of us all

Is she who wanders happily

And finds her joy in simple treasures

From the Great Lakes and the sea

          By Frank Carpenter ©

Rocks for Sale

As I was driving down our street on a recent Saturday morning I came upon a very interesting sale. The neighbor kids across from us were out on their driveway in front of a hand painted sign that read, “Rocks for Sale.” Naturally, I had to investigate. The kids had painted some rocks and added glitter to create what they considered works of art. These sub-precious stones were for sale at the bargain rate of only 25 cents each. Now I’m a sucker for anything that kids sell. In fact, we have a family policy that no matter how much of a hurry you’re in you have to stop at every lemonade stand and make a purchase. And I had to admit that a rock sale, while clearly unconventional, conformed to at least the spirit of the aforementioned lemonade policy. Needless to say, I stopped to peruse the geologic curiosities of the neighborhood rock barons.

Clearly these preschool kids were onto something because their creations were interesting, to say the least. They thought they had some truly marketable treasures and who was I to dispute the unbiased artistic wisdom of children. This gave me pause to consider some of the things that grownups assign value to. In fact, we seem to fill our lives with trinkets and conveniences that have little more intrinsic value than those glitter rocks did. Our stores, art galleries and even art museums are brimming with items that have no more utility than a rock, and are often far less appealing … at least in my opinion. Not to mention that you’d be hard pressed to derive a greater joy-per-dollar benefit than these particular 25 cent rocks promised. I’m clearly not an art critic, but you would have to concede that throughout our culture there are countless items, art and otherwise, for which the assigned value is often unrelated to the intrinsic value or the utility value. This merely confirms the old adage that beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.

Consequently, I would challenge each of you to survey your own life and consider what things are truly precious. If you’re anything like me, you may discover that you have assigned value to many things that are actually worthless in the long run. What is more, we often work ourselves to death so that we can own all these things. Perhaps they even own us. As it turns out the most priceless things in our lives are probably the ones that don’t cost anything; like people, happiness, laughter, faith and the like. So those are the things in which to invest our precious and limited resources.

I’ve included a poem below that I actually did write on another occasion, while watching some little girls assign artistic value to a pile of rocks on a beach long ago. They taught me a lesson which I have never forgotten. That lesson was that joy can be derived from almost anything if you approach it with the heart of a child. So don’t fill your life with stuff that doesn’t matter. Instead, look for the beauty in what is near at hand … and discover how to enjoy it. And if you should happen to pass happen to pass a sign that reads “Rocks for Sale” hit the brakes, dump all the coins out of your car’s ash tray, and get yourself a whole bag of the little beauties. I bought five.

Pebbles

I watched a little girl
Sitting on the beach today
Sorting through the stones and pebbles
Which she kept or tossed away
To me, they all looked worthless
Yet, her childish eyes could see
A value hidden in them
Which, somehow, eluded me
For out of countless thousands
She chose a special few
Based on shape or size or texture
Or some unusual hue
Proclaiming they were priceless
That she must have them for her own
She found value, even beauty
Where I saw only cold, grey stone
Tomorrow they’d be stones once more
Which she would cast away
To be polished by the ocean
And found again another day
And it occurs that she’s no different
Than most grownups I have known
Who spend their lives pursuing
What they consider precious stone
Which they pile up in heaps
Around their children and their wives
With the goal that all their treasure
Would bring value to their lives
Until, one day, they wake up
And discover, to their shock
That what they spent their lives on
Amounts to but a pile of rock
When we search for things of value
We must choose most carefully
So we only keep the real gems
And toss the pebbles back in the sea
                   By Frank Carpenter ©