I have lost something very valuable this days. Something that is not possible to estimate in it's real value, literally. I know though ( I have certificate), it was pretty expensive when it was purchased. Price-wise.

I have lost my engagement ring. I am looking for it for few days now and it probably didn't hit me yet that I do not have it and very possible that I will never ever have it back. As it was of my silliness really, letting it go from my fingers to my 8 years old for few moments and then forgetting to ask back for it... Well, things happened, they just do.

Last thing I have memories of this ring - my little boy is walking away with a shiny thing in his little fingers and wondering up loud to himself : "I wonder how much this ring costs..." He asked me this question when he saw me washing it few moments earlier and I brushed his inappropriate curiosity away by sending him away to my husband in hopes Mario will be able to fulfill little wondering mind in proper way. Mario does it all the time so I trusted him on that.

That was the very last time I saw my ring. It was 6 days ago.

I usually never remove it off my finger, only in those rare moments when I really mess up and cover it in paint during my work...that was the moment when I let it go. We looked everywhere and till today we cannot find it.

Why I am not feeling angry and frustrated? I am not feeling any shadow of sorrow one perhaps (myself included), could feel while loosing such a precious thing? I do have a missing feeling of my ring around my skin. I do miss the feeling of my husband playing with it around my finger while holding my hand in his.

I am missing the look of it when I notice bright colorful sparkles in the sun rays and the reflections it created. It was truly beautiful.

I am missing memories of what this ring reminded me when I looked at it. Commitment. Desire. Love. Family. Respect. Pride. Growth - this ring symbolized so much more for me than I could ever put in wording. It was a part of Man who I love. Then why don't I feel angry, frustrated and stressed with a loss of such significant thing in any of this past few days? This is truly a puzzle to me.

Coming from working class family and truly knowing real cost of earning every single cent, why wouldn't I be on the top of erupting volcano right now, crying out the lost cost of it?

I started realizing last night that I just don't think of it as a costly thing. There no materialistic value involved in my comprehension. It crossed my mind a couple of times that for the cost of that ring I could supply myself with Art material for the happy next decade, if I could just return the $ value of this ring in some magical way...

I live in "generation rich" era, where people want be, capable of, can be, and trying very hard to be rich. If they can't, they just fake it. People do have more and more possessions. Things and staff make people feel good about their lives, about themselves today.

For decades, I was a part of a big mass-production machine, machine which created millions of things to make people to feel fulfilled and good about themselves. Things to make people to want to buy staff they really never needed and truly often could not even afford. Machines, which created people's life styles, their dreams and passions, their ideas and their very lives for themselves. I can see it every day in my little boys - how can you don't know that game or not to have that kind of toy?

I was an important part in such mechanism, pushing every possible and impossible buttons until I broke. I broke because I worked too hard, because I forgot of real values and started putting work before myself and family. I wanted to be the best I could be at my work and to sell as much as I could for the company I worked for. I wanted to make profit for my company to feel good about myself professionally and to make more $ in return. How far $ can go? How much one can, should, must work to make a decent living? How much you can take without quality time and calm mind? How far would you go for yourself and your family to stay with today companies which for a long time do not appreciate you and seeing you just as a literal part in their mechanism?

We live in era where industries are having bloody battles over consumer markets, where companies are not any longer offer consumer it's interest or desire but only after their own profit interests.

We live in times when people are brain-washed with all the must - needs - haves to the point of their own destruction. Materialism. How far do you take it? How happy will it make you?

All I can think of now is how happy I am that all I had associated with that very expensive ring - is ALL still with me - Commitment, Desire, Love, Family,Respect, Pride, Growth - and much much much more. What I lost? Grid and cliche of having expensive diamond engagement ring. Yes, I could sell it and to buy lot of Art material for my paintings, but I know that I would never sell it if I had it, so what's the point of feeling sorry?

I am happy to learn that today, after a year of leaving corporate, I learnt about myself that I have found myself back to my real values, I found myself back to my important pieces of existence, without feeling sorry for something $-cost worse, realizing that I have much greater things to be thankful for

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