A Person's Currency

(excerpt from Running the Sahara - a diary from the desert and beyond, published on 20th December, 2019)

Strip away the things a person has, the ornaments decorating the body and home, the brash and gaudy baubles, others simple, others perhaps even refined, and what do you have left?

The person is what is left, a person made up of actions and inactions, dreams and thoughts, fears, desires, love given, accepted, rebuked.

I have spent a great deal of time considering values on my runs, what I see as beautiful, what I admire, what I could share and give. Running through the forest near my home in the suburbs of Basel in the early morning, with the sky just catching light and the world waking to a new day, body gliding over soft earth surrounded by trees that came before me and will be standing long after I am gone, the cool air flowing over me, and there is birdsong, or it is my elation transmuting what I feel inside, and why am I here?

What is a man’s currency? A person’s currency, my currency? It’s not the job I have, my position in a company, the money I have, my possessions, because you can take all those away from me. What you can’t take away are what I have done, my knowledge and skills, and more than anything, what I have given and shared from my life, the knowledge and skills that I’ve accumulated. That is my currency and that’s a person’s currency. And the more you spend, the more currency you have.