Highest and Best Use

Hello to everyone that has decided to take a minute to read my budding blog.  I thought I would use this first post to explain my reason for writing.  

Sometime around the ripe age of 27 I found myself scratching the top couple of tiers of Maslow's hierarchy of needs (see diagram below).  Realizing that being here is a luxury, I nonetheless plunged into a search for a sense of purpose.

The search, of course, proved difficult with my limited life experience and resultant small frame of reference.  The whole concept of purpose seemed intimidating, the decisions that would stem from any sort of revelation questionable at best.  

Then, a few months ago, while climbing rocks inside an indoor gym with my friend Sara, I had an idea.  What if instead of trying to find some big purpose I just focused on extracting from myself the maximum amount of utility for the rest of the world?  Perhaps then, unobstructed by my whims, I could eventually become wise and self-actualized. Here, a concept borrowed from the world of commercial banking (my current vocation) proved useful:

Per Wikipedia: "Highest and best use...is a concept in real estate appraisal. It states that the value of a property is directly related to the use of that property; the highest and best use is the reasonably probable use that produces the highest property value. This use, the Highest and Best Use, may or may not be the current use of the property. Highest and best use is a designation to identify an entity which would potentially have a higher value if used for a different purpose."

This blog (as much as I can stick to it) will be dedicated to documentation of my treating myself as a piece of real estate and working to discover my personal highest and best use and thoughts loosely related to the subject.

As a side note, I will say that although I was not the first to come up with this idea of applying real estate appraisal concepts to people, I did think of the idea on my own (through conversation with Sara.)  While I'm on the subject of side notes, I would also like to express my dissatisfaction with one G Douglas Pemberton who used up the Blogspot URL for highest and best use to talk about actual real estate.

Thanks for reading.  Hope to see you here again soon.