“A corkscrew is useful, a hug from your mother is valuable. A door is useful, watching a sunset is valuable. A car is useful, a good friendship is valuable. Having hobbies is useful, having faith and praying is valuable. The useful is almost always more expensive than the valuable. In fact, what is valuable rarely costs money. This occurs because money is useful but not valuable. The valuable generates much more happiness in the long term than the useful, yet we often value the useful more than the valuable.”
Learning to distinguish between the useful and the valuable might be one of the wisest things you can do. There are times when useful will trump valuable, but most of the time, we don’t have to choose between the two.
Living well (or being wealthy) is learning how to luxuriate in the valuable, even when you’re not feeling very financially stable.