A wandering inquiry into worth
GABS — in Korean, 값 — is value, price, cost, worth. Here it becomes an adventure: a winding path where each waypoint reveals a softer, truer idea of what things are worth.
Waypoint the First
A coin has a number on its face. A berry, picked from the right bush on the right morning, has none. Both may be called valuable. The quest begins where that collision begins — in the quiet before we decide which kind of worth we mean.
Gabs is older than arithmetic. It names the moment you look at a thing and feel it matter. Before it was a price, it was a recognition.
“Worth is not measured. It is met.”
Waypoint the Second
Some things grow in the keeping. A letter from a long walk. A phrase a grandmother only said once. Price cannot reach them.
Some things quietly increase when offered away. A seat on the bench. A slower explanation. The gift is the gabs itself.
Some things are only worth what you attend to in them. An herb garden. A friendship. A question you refuse to drop.
Waypoint the Third
Every quest has a place where the traveller puts down the pack. This is that place. Look, if you like, at the light on the moss. Consider what it cost to get here, and what it did not cost.
“What we call cheap is often only what we have agreed not to see. What we call precious is often what we have finally, slowly, learned to look at.”
Waypoint the Fourth
Some quests end with a treasure chest. This one ends with an open ledger — a page that refuses to total itself. Not because the sums are wrong, but because gabs keeps moving, keeps unfolding.
The path continues
The quest does not require a destination. It asks only that you keep asking what things are worth and whether the question has grown softer, kinder, and slower each time you have answered it.
gabs·quest