I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be famous. A movie star, comedian, talk show host, video game designer, anything that has me living in the upper echelons of first-world society, where I can have empty rooms filled with immaterial objects and more toilets to use than I could possibly imagine.

Perhaps that is a facet of life most people don’t think about. Most of us dream of such a world, but dismiss it from being anything we could reach, or want to reach. After all, rich people are stuck-up, emotionally detached, narcissistic assholes who only worry about their wealth and privilege. We’ve convinced ourselves that these people are not even human in many regards, or that they have no place among we mere mortals.

Then there are those who put it into logical perspective. Your wealth and status are consequences of hard work, effort, and making intelligent choices. The reason I am not rich and successful is because I am not Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, or a thousand other people because I didn’t seize the opportunity and build upon it. All of mankind’s greatest achievements can be consolidated down to a small percentage of the population, and the rest of us just consume, without ever knowing how, or why. Computers and technology account for nearly all of the world’s logistics and day-to-day living, and yet people still call me up on how to hook their printer up. How is it possible that even though it took the efforts of a few to create so much, that the rest of us aren’t even the slightest bit successful too just by using it? Is there some weird tip I am missing to becoming a hojillionaire overnight?

I, of course, know that sitting idly by and doing nothing does not get me anything. I know that for me to succeed, I have to do. But one of the fundamental questions I’ve asked myself as I continue to wrestle with the political and social forces outside my sphere of influence, is how do we assign value to the things we’re surrounded by each day? How do we determine what is valuable and what is not? Value is that drives our entire existence, and yet it’s something we question every day. We’re always looking for the meaning of life, but what if that meaning is value? Ideally, our value is ourselves. We value ourselves. We value our existence. We continue living for the sake of doing whatever it is we want in order to achieve something. Along the way we find more things to value. Friends, family, food, water, we assign value and rank that value as we process the world around us. But unfortunately our conflicts, our emotions, and our actions, are driven by value. We fight for value, we die for value, we sell ourselves mentally and physically for value. We’ve increasingly fallen prey to the idea that we can obtain more value for ourselves by taking away others’ value, by sacrificing the many for the needs of the few. We’ve shaped a society where we want what we cannot have and we have what we cannot possibly afford. The value is too high, and our currency ranks ourselves against other people’s values to determine who has more access to goods and services. Every single action and reaction revolves around everyone’s perceived value, and to everyone, their value is always greater than someone else’s.

I may never be famous, or have a large house, but I like to think that I’ve learned that what I am able to do, is hopefully enough value to those I work with, and those I help, that they in turn give me the things I need to live the life I want, to be able to experience new experiences and maybe find new value in the future to come.