Neko ni koban.

Cats love shiny round things. If a Japanese family had raised you, your parents would teach you this truth according to tradition. Gold coins ought to delight a cat – yet the feline never understands why the gold is valuable. The cat simply appreciates the appearance of a coin.  If you talk of “gold coins to a cat,” you point out that an object is valued without understanding its potential value or purpose.

Cats will play with a piece of string, and never consider its value.  The cat just likes to play.  We may make the same mistake, finding something in our attic and not realizing its potential on the Antique Roadshow. We may use the classic vase to hold daisies, without knowing that it once belonged to Thomas Jefferson.

The value of things depends on its potential usefulness, or to its connection with something valued.  At Yale University, a scholar found a painting in its historical vault, with no known artist. Admiring the anonymous work for a number of months, the historian became convinced the work was created by Diego Velasquez, the Spanish painter from the court of King Philip the IV. Not only historically significant, a recent canvas by Velasquez had recently sold for $17 million in auction. 

Now, Yale University treats this work as a priceless work from the baroque period, and will probably never sell it.  Scholars think this work demonstrates an early work from a master who produced very few paintings. Previously, it gathered dust!

Do you have talents and skills that you are not putting to use? Could your true value be as “gold coins to a cat?”

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Be a leader.  Use imagination, career experience, and awareness of your world.  Take action.

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