This story got sent to me by someone who was trying to make a point. They were trying to show that if you end up in a situation where you are not appreciated you should move on.
Strangely I see this story completely differently as a good reflection of many things which are wrong with how we view the world around us.
But first the story:
A father says to his daughter, “You have passed your exams with honors and so I am going to give you a car. Its quite an old car but it works. But before I give you the car I would like you to take it to the car dealer on the edge of town and ask him how much it is worth.” The daughter takes the car to the car dealer to get a valuation and then returns home. “Well” she said. “The car dealer said the car is pretty old and so he thinks it is worth about $1,000”. The father nods and then asks her to take the car to the pawn shop to be valued. She does so and returns home to announce, “The pawn shop also says the car is quite old and they would only pay $100 for it”. The father listens and then says, “OK, finally take the car to the car club and ask them what they think it is worth. After that the car is yours”. The daughter does so and returns home. She says “The Car Club said this is a vintage Nissan Skyline 5i of which only a few remain. They think it would sell for $100,0000”.
Now the moral of the story – I was told by the person who sent it to me – is that if you are not appreciated where you are then go to somewhere that you will be. I suspect that is also the thinking behind the original author.
Now I won’t argue with it on a practical side. If you are looking for a better job you will find one that pays more if you find an employer who appreciates you more.
But let’s just hold on a minute and rethink this story in every other aspect.
To begin with who says you need to be appreciated. Sounds odd but its true. The need to feel appreciated has been drummed into us from our earliest days and it is reinforced in our minds in all sorts of ways on a daily basis. Basically being appreciated = good. But apart from that programming there is no reason for this to be true.
What this story is actually saying is that society will decide where you live. If you drop the need to be appreciated then you decide where you live. You are free.
But it actually gets worse. In the story the daughter took the car to three different places – they all ‘appreciated’ the car to one degree or another. None of them rejected the car.
So now the daughter is left with the feeling that perhaps there is a 4th place out there that would value the car even higher. And so it is with the moral of the story – how do you know if there isn’t another place that will appreciate you even more? So you live your life with that lingering doubt in your mind.
What if the daughter had gone to the Pawn Shop first ($100) and then the Car Dealership ($1,000) but had not heard of the Car Club? What is she sold the car to the dealership and later heard about the Car Club and their valuation. Does that mean she would have to live her life full of regret?
What if that place you are right now, the place where you do not feel appreciated, is the best it is going to get? What if you are at the Car Club right now and anywhere else you look or go is only going to end up being the Pawn Shop or the Dealership.
You don’t know. You can create an imaginary life in your mind – a fantasy world where you move to a different location and everyone appreciates you mor – but you don’t know if its true and so you live in discontentment.
Now you start to see that this hankering after appreciation is actually condemning you to a lifetime of unhappiness while at the same time letting society push you this way and that because of your needs, because of your attachment to appreciation.
If you drop that attachment you drop that unhappiness. You don’t need to live in doubt that there might be a place that appreciates you more or you won’t need to live with regret when you find out later you could have been living in that place for years.
To me the moral of the story is actually “Drop your attachment to being appreciated and you will have a life where you are content”. I would even go further and say “Drop your need for acceptance”. It only came from your child hood programming and society’s brainwashing.
That doesn’t mean I’m saying never wash again and stop being nice to people. Far from it. I’m saying do things for a reason other than because you are attached to being accepted. Was for hygiene, be nice to people because there is no reason to be nasty. But be nice because that is your default, not because you expect something back from them. That you expect them to show you acceptance and appreciation.
If you do then you are laying expectations on other people – you are telling them “You are responsible for my happiness and if you don’t act the way I want you to then I will go somewhere where I can find people who will take that responsibility seriously and act the way I expect them to”.
“And if they stop living up to my expectations, if they stop making me happy I will move on again”.
All the time you are simply saying others are responsible for your happiness … which is nonsense. Happiness is something you decide. Drop attachments to acceptance and appreciation and you leave the people around you free and you leave yourself free. Better still, now that you are not creating conditions for your happiness (I won’t he happy until …) you can be happy.