After proposing to my fiancé I wanted to seal the deal, with a ring, as a sign of our covenant that proved to be more symbolic than valuable at the time, that is, if value is reduced to that which is monetary. At this juncture in my life I had just spent all of my surplus money to go to Israel where I had met my fiancé, now wife, so if you were to consider the full package deal of everything it cost me then I imagine that this sort of significance makes the value of the ring even more valuable than most. Granted my assignment was not to find a wife, but much of my time and resources while living there was spent on courting her which essentially became more priceless than any token of agreement. I said all that to say this, that I could only afford to buy her a blue topaz ring with about 24 white diamonds which were so small that it takes a magnifying glass just to see them. Now I am not trying to justify or defend myself in minimizing the importance of such sacred jewelry, but in this situation, it becomes a matter of perspective regarding the whole picture versus a glancing snapshot of her ring finger.
What makes this whole story quite humorous is the day I presented it to her she thought it must have been a rare blue diamond, which is one of the most valuable diamonds to purchase, and when I had told her otherwise, it went over pretty well, considering, but minimally she felt embarrassed and perhaps a little silly and foolish to have believed it was a blue diamond instead of a semi-precious gemstone.
Though this stone is exceptionally beautiful, for the untrained eye or person, it would be easy to become a victim of mistaken identity, e.g., cubic zirconia. So I was thinking that sometimes our lives can be unexamined like this as we take something at face value as to what we have been given or offered believing it to be one thing without taking a hard look at all the facts to see what we really got as asking those critical questions about what it is. We are good at surface level observations as defending our knowledge of what we think it is or what it should be, as well as listening to other opinions about what they think is correct, but I suspect that many are unwilling to become trained experts, such as a gemologist, in donning the loupe to get a closer look at what we really have in our possession as an objective view of reality, as even willing to criticize or critique our biases related to our secular or religious worldviews.
Of course, we know that this may not essentially matter when we’re talking ‘bling’ but when it comes to the possibility of infinitely significant matters of ultimate meaning and purpose to life, then what we believe should outshine everything else as requiring certified authenticity.
For the skeptic who believes that nothing, in this respect, is true, or we can’t know for sure what’s real, should likewise be skeptical of their own skepticism especially as the former is a ‘know it all,’ while not knowing everything, and the latter espouses ignorance, of which some don’t really want to know, both viewpoints which I’m quite cynical about.
Others are just relativists when it comes to the whole situation as not even caring whether it is true, as long as it has sentimental value to a person and if they sincerely believe it to be real then that’s all that matters, as essentially claiming it to be true for themselves, even though it may prove to be fake. This loss of insight, as to the eye of the beholder, may work when we are talking about preferences to normal, everyday life, in that such subjectivism is non-consequential, but what I am talking about is something that is truly beautiful, an absolute beauty of which all others lack the luster of in comparison.
All such people, can, at times, be so confidently unconcerned in stating that these matters, don’t matter, yet if they do matter, then what they believe, doesn’t matter, no matter what, and thus it should matter as the most important matter to life. I think these views lack the honesty and integrity in placing personal truth over and against authenticity which is inconsistent with their daily lives as treating other matters as more matterful when it comes down to comparatively trivial questions.
Anyway, let’s just say you bought your fiancé a ring but the clerk accidentally charged you the wrong price as paying more for it than what is was really worth, would you be happy? How about if the jeweler tried to deceitfully sell you a one karat diamond as a half karat, would it matter? What if your fiancé had the ability to buy anything in the display case and chose to purchase you a piece of phony glass over a costly diamond, would you have honestly been satisfied? Essentially, we know it matters, and to passively accept whatever we have been given in life, without close inspection, is like overvaluing costume jewelry while throwing out the crown jewels.
Sometimes we wear what we have been given as an identity to what is popular and stylish for all to see. Maybe it’s a hand me down keepsake that we are unwilling to doff. Perhaps it seems to fit comfortably, or maybe the fingers are so pridefully swollen that they are unable or unwilling to remove it. Regardless of why they are holding on to their “precious,” so tightly, in the end, will cost them everything regardless of its personal worth. Socrates once said that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” is that true for you?
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