A herder is supposed to herd the sheep, but our flock turns our world upside down so many times that we wonder who is herding who. We found James in the bed. He was upset.
We tried comforting him, but sometimes it’s better to turn off the tap than to decide to stop drinking. And in his tears James had a lesson to teach us.
‘Worth’, he sobbed. ‘Worth. I have been sobbing and pondering about worth,’ he continued. ‘I know I live in your world, Potamotrygorgeous, where things are bought, where things are priced, and therefore there is born this concept of things being underpriced and overpriced, but in my world there exists no such thing. It’s not about quantity, remember? We don’t live in numbers.’
‘Perhaps I should compare it to a tribe where people don’t count. They have two concepts: one and many. They can name all names of their five children, and lay out five pieces of food for each of them, but if you ask him how many children he has, he says ‘many’. And how many pieces of food he laid out, he says ‘many’. He sees the world in terms of one or many. So things don’t have worth, see?’
‘We have the same heart. Therefore we don’t have a price. You have experienced it earlier when three sheep went to China. You gave the buyer total freedom to determine the price she wanted to pay. Remember how you felt? Remember that how due to that amount the three sheep immediately fell into one of those two categories of underpriced or overpriced? Remember how you felt? Do you think you feel differently if the amount is so different that the category changes to the other one? It’s still about money then, and not about sheep..’
‘Don’t worry, James’, Jomo whispered from the past. ‘Potamotrygorgeous is quick to learn. This won’t happen again. It’s not about money, nor is it about paying too little or too much, because worth is abstract. Who can decide your worth other than the soul of the one who is looking?’
‘The three sheep went to China because Potamotrygorgeous had to learn this eh.. valuable lesson, if I may coin that term and make yet another money joke in that same sentence.’
‘I know you will hear me if I whisper this in your ear. Some sheep are ready to leave the flock, the same way a grown child needs to and even wants to leave the house, but some sheep still have work to do here.’
And to experience that is priceless.