The Appraiser
As I made my way ashore, I spotted a bespectacled man pouring sand into a strange machine. Curious, I approached him, hoping to get directions to the nearest town.
"Sir," I said. "Can you tell me where we are right now?"
The man adjusted his glasses and said, "Not now. I'm busy." Then he poured another cup of sand into the machine, which seemed to spit it right back out.
"Busy... with what, if I may ask?"
"Appraising. The beach. I must know the value of the beach."
I looked around the shore. A peaceful scene it was. The sound of seagulls. The crashing of waves. A cliff to the north, on which stood a lighthouse quite proud.
"The beach looks rather nice to me. How do you measure its worth?" I asked.
The appraiser poured yet another cup into his machine, which I could see had a small screen with a numerical output. It said: twenty-seven thousand, four hundred and eighty-six.
"By counting up the sand, of course. The more sand a beach has, the more valuable it becomes."
It was in that moment that I knew I was talking to someone with a profoundly different perspective on value than mine.
"But wouldn't that take... ages?" I asked, perplexed. "You could spend your whole life counting sand and not once enjoy the beach."
"But I am enjoying the beach," he replied. "Enjoying how valuable it is. Also, I have a system."
"A system?"
"Yes. First, I measure the beach. Then, I count up the sand in one fraction of the beach. Then I use mathematics to approximate the amount of sand remaining in the whole."
"...you can do that?" I couldn't believe it.
"Yes." He smiled, proud as a lighthouse.
"And this shows the beach's value?"
"Yes. In units of sand."
At that point, I didn't know what else to say. We didn't value the shore the same way.
"Um... can you tell me where the nearest town is?" I was ready to be done with this conversation.
"Go ask the man in the lighthouse. I don't appraise towns."
And so I made my way toward the lighthouse on the cliff, wondering if the appraiser truly valued the beach... or just one part of it.