Measuring the immeasurable.
If a tree falls down in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
I’ve been doing a course on zoom, it’s based in America so many of us are across timezones, tuning in at different times of the day. There are speakers and discussions every week for 8 weeks. Sadly, I’m nearing the end. Each week there is just one pdf with a few notes. It is usually a sparse 2 to 3 pages long to illustrate that theme. At this rate, I expect about 30 pages in total, of mostly graphics and images to support over 35 hrs of talks and discussions.
To anyone else, it might seem there is so little to show for the course. No evidence of the participating, listening and reflecting. It’s all inside.
Or is it?
Most of my offerings to have little physical to show of.
Yet participants and visitors speak of inspiration and transformation.
It’s uncomfortable to be in business, make an offering, add a financial cost and persuade of sharing time together, in an immersive experience. What price do you put on that? What are the ‘R.O.I.’s? What can we measure to know it is a success?
Whilst weeding yesterday, I began thinking the same about a garden. How can we measure the cost benefit of the energy, time, money put into a garden? I know clients have trouble justifying costs, for plants, equipment or classes to learn - they say “it’s my hobby”, or “luxury”. In terms of biodiversity, soil health and even food, a garden’s worth per square metre is utterly priceless. Yet gardens and growing has little commercial value save for the product it creates.
I believe assigning capitalist values to our natural world is problematic. It goes utterly against the laws of nature.
No wonder we have so much trouble justifying it’s worth. It has most often little financial value yet in every other way measurable, a garden, the labour of which and our environment is quite literally worth the earth.
It is time for a new way.