How much is '298'?

'Everyone is different, everyone is good'—that's a truly wonderful phrase, isn't it?

But I want you to think about it in terms of your everyday life for a moment.

If someone asked you, 'How much is 298 to you?', what kind of number would pop into your head?

You'd probably answer '298 yen,' wouldn't you?

It's that perfect price you often see in the supermarket deli section. 'Oh, this side dish for dinner tonight is 298 yen. That's a bit of a bargain!'—that kind of '298' as a friend to the common person.
But what if this were about the cost of a lunch on a day you want to treat yourself?

You might think, 'Wait, a 2,980 yen lunch? That's quite a splurge!'
Furthermore, if you're into cars or watches, you might immediately think of '2.98 million,' and if you're a business owner, a number at the national budget level like '29.8 billion' might cross your mind.
Isn't that interesting?

Even though we are looking at the same sequence of three numbers, '2-9-8,' the unit changes completely—from 'yen' to 'billions'—depending on your background, your current sense of money, and your mood at that moment.

No one is wrong. Everyone is right.
It's exactly what 'everyone is different, everyone is good' is all about.

I want you to stop and think about this for a second.
What was the '298' for you just now?

The '298' in your head and the '298' the person sitting next to you imagined are surely different.

It's nonsense to argue about it, saying, 'Why yen?! It's obviously millions!' If we could just laugh together and say, 'Huh, so that's your 298. That's interesting!', I feel like the world would become a little kinder just by doing that.

Everyone's mental scale, everyone's own '298'.

What kind of value are you placing on that number today?