Just what is somewhere’s value to you?
One of you good folks, reading the earlier entry about the name Caversham, wondered about how you can best judge where you live – how can you assess somewhere’s good and bad aspects.
Talking it over with a friend, a whole bunch of potential factors came up. These included, in no particular order:
- The price of property – renting or buying.
- Jobs in the area.
- Jobs that are within commuting distance.
- What it’s like for travel.
- The quality and availability of local education.
- Health – access to doctors, dentists, hospitals.
- The quality and availability of local shops, restaurants and similar.
- The quality and availability of other local amenities – sports and social clubs and similar.
- Levels of local crime.
- Local people in general.
- Local people – friends and family.
- You and the community you are part of – and there are numerous ways of defining community, and you can be a member of several communities.
And that’s just the first quick list – not even one cuppa’s worth of thought!
Now, that list might all be pretty obvious stuff. But, as is hinted-at with the last bullet point, it could quickly become detailed and nuanced, and of course we’d all have our own personal set of factors we’d consider: what’s important to you might not be important to me, and vice versa. And that’s all fine and sensible enough. However, it all gets complicated when it comes actually judging things. How can you assess the value to you of any of the things on your personal list?
Yes, there might some things you can put a price on – property-related costs for example. And in some cases there may be imperatives at play – you have to take into account one or other factor on your list. But, in truth, a lot of how we evaluate all the factors that comprise our lives is emotion-led: our judgments are more emotional rather than rational.
With all that in mind, the best I can come up with is that you have to try and assign a ‘weight’, an importance, to each of the factors you think matter to you. That would be a start, but it would also be very difficult. Let’s say you want to give everything on your list a rating on a 1-10 scale. OK, but how are you going to decide the value of – and thus rate – anything? Are your friends a 10, local health care 8 and travel-connections a 6? Or … or … etc. It’s a real head-scratcher.
So, that begs the question – why bother? I suggest there is a valuable upside of your efforts to come-up with and rate your own list. It may well help you properly appreciate and understand what is it about your life and where you live it that is really important.
