Odd. A family member has revealed that my antique Lotus sports car named Red Pea is my ‘prized possession’.
I protested, but now I’m thinking.
What is it that makes people decide what matters to other people? At issue: money spent. Time spent. Degree of care.
We draw conclusions from what we think we know.
It has been said that you know what people care about by whether they will spend money, time, and care on it.

I have other roadworthy vehicles and if push came to shove, they would survive a herd thinning before Red Pea.
They’re more practical, more useful.
Prized possession indeed. But maybe I have the description of the term wrong.

Prized, to me, implies ‘first and foremost’, ‘most favored’.
Thinking about it, prizing doesn’t constitute a complete picture of something’s hierarchy of importance. Maybe ‘prized’ doesn’t mean ‘ultimate’ or foremost.
Maybe it just means ‘highly appreciated’.

But here’s the rub. If the time I spend on something exceeds the time I spend on some other thing, do I love it more?
This is a classic sore spot with people and is probably why there is a parable of the wayward son or the assurance of Malachi that it pays to live right even if it looks like those who cut corners get ahead doing so.
Maybe there are other variables to consider. There almost always are.

We don’t always devote ourselves the most to the things we love the most. Not at all.
I’ll speak for me because I know me better than I know anyone else.
Why do I paint the models that I paint who are not paid? At the outset, it is because they’re available, enthusiastic, and look the part.

So much of life is tied to proximal elements. We visit the recreational spots that are close. We visit those who are open to visits.
We drive the cars that are in our possession. Convenience reigns.
We attend to things that break. We spend longer on problems that are more difficult. We eat at the restaurant that has the best price for food we enjoy, if it’s also convenient.
We eat from food that is available where we graze.
Friends who are difficult to contact or persistently unavailable get less attention.
As the hiring manager, I can tell you that many times I hired the person who was more available over the one who was more qualified.
Availability is an ultimate component of qualification.

There’s more. What we devote ourselves to depends on interests and preferences.
Something that matters to me and under appreciated by you can add a mystery factor.
I’ve seen women get an adrenaline rush from the sight of certain brands of purse. Not my thing, but I get it.

At worst, it’s worship and covetousness but often it’s just appreciation. A car person may get worked up at the sight of certain make that someone else will not even notice.
Fans of celebrity people are so called because ‘fan’ is short for ‘fanatic’.

I am drawn to the Lotus car because I like the uniqueness and the style. If it was shaped differently, my interest might be more or might end, depending.

So, prized possession? Well, I do appreciate that car.
Yes, I also named it, which to some denotes affection but it also simplifies things. When you name your pet, that serves a similar purpose.

Red Pea is so called partly to simplify life and partly out of humor.
It imparts a little character to the thing. It’s still a machine. I don’t worship it. But it has been needy these past three or four years and rather than sell it broken to get out of the work, I did the work.
Red is the color. Pea is the thing that was used in the Hans Christian Anderson tale to detect the royalty of a princess. It served to irritate her when she slept. Real royalty, as the story goes, would be that delicate.
Red Pea has indeed played the part of a test and has been an irritant so that rather than enjoying the ownership experience as a driver, I learned to fix it.

So maybe it is a prized possession. But it’s a fee agent. Now that it’s running right and behaving like a real car, if I wanted to sell then I could do it in good conscience.
Doing so would be more than a financial transaction though. It would be the transfer of all the benefits of my work to another and at a loss to me.
So I do have reason to hang on and enjoy ownership the way I originally expected.
It makes little rational sense. I can park a modern car anywhere and as long as I’m not in the city across the river, it will likely still be there when I go to drive home.
Red Pea is maybe a little more vulnerable. It’s more fragile. It’s more trouble. But I’m hanging on to it.
People impute value to things and often they’re correct but they also get it wrong sometimes.

Value is a funny thing and due caution is in order. For decades a family kept a painting behind their couch. They bought it for the frame and didn’t much care for it.
The artist who painted it was very popular in his day but afterward the value of his work plummeted.
Now that unappreciated painting is worth millions on the open market.
The family got it, as I recall, at a garage sale for cheap. I’ve also read stories of people who had things they highly valued that were of no interest to anyone upon their death.

Here again is the Lesson of Red Pea and the other Europa that I own: it is what it is and takes what it takes.
In terms of relationships, if I spend more time on my interests than with people, it does not mean the interests are more valuable. Some people are like nutmeg and diamonds and some are like potatoes and corn.
They are what they are and I enjoy them accordingly.