There is direct correlation between how you value things and how you value people. This isn’t my idea. I discovered it while reading Naomi Klein’s intro to “Let my People Go Surfing” by Yvon Chouinard. This simple truth hit me hard.

Put differently, if you or your company views its employees as disposable “Human Resources” to acquire or terminate based on the bottom line, it likely views the widgets it sells in the same way. Rehabilitation and repair are not good for the bottom line of our financial balance sheet, but they are good for the bottom line of our lives. We make movies about the broken becoming whole for a reason.

How ironic then, that in order to “win” we deprive ourselves of an important tool that brings incredible value not only to the environment or to employees, but to ourselves as well.

I believe happiness is a non-zero-sum game. I hope that one day, we (myself included) will be able to move past the greed and start building a world where we truly value people and belongings as the extensions of ourself that they are.