(Last year I shared this thought at Christmas and so many commented on Facebook and Twitter that I thought I’d repost it. Merry Christmas, DC)
Some years ago I sat on a plane headed towards Lima, Peru reading a USA Today. Embedded in the papers’ style section was a brief article on the hot new trend in New York interior design, decorative alpaca pillows. The article stated that these genuine alpaca pillows came from Peru, and were priced near $300. The folks sitting next to me must have been startled as I sat up straight in my chair, with a figurative lightbulb going off over my head.
During that period of time I was working in Peru and had been in and out of the country dozens of times and had seen alpaca pillows like these many times, in fact, the country was full of alpaca stuff, although not all of it was high-quality. If I was industrious enough, perhaps I could buy some of these pillows and bring them back to the states and make a few bucks. So I did, I scoured the country, looking for the highest quality of pillow possible, and bought a suitcase full of them…for $10 a piece. There was so much competition from others making these pillows that I didn’t have to pay a premium, they were cheap.
When I returned to the States, however, I had a hard time selling the pillows to anyone. The reason wasn’t a lack of interest in stores, or that people didn’t find the pillows attractive, it was that I had a mental block on selling the pillows for more than I had paid for them. To me, they were worth $10. Having seen how many of these pillows there were in the world and knowing how easy it was for me to get them, I just couldn’t mark them up enough to make it worth my time to bring them back. My mistake was that I was de-valuing the gift! It was a problem of perceived value.
So it is in life, when you’re surrounded by something, whether it’s love, encouragement, food, water, beauty, friends, you tend to think of those things as common. Yet without those things, you’d be very poor indeed.
My challenge this Christmas season is to remind our community that the resources we sometimes take for granted; loving family, shelter, food, water, warmth, encouragement and love are indeed valuable beyond measure.
This Christmas, give a gift of value to someone. Don’t de-value something just because you’ve got it in abundance.
David Curry
