Some things which you feel extremely intensely have little objective value.  For example, hitting your finger full force with a hammer has significantly more intensity than a wayward chastisement of your child.  In value however, the latter carries much greater repercussions. 

Like a dog, there are many times in my life where I have chased the strongest scent.  Imagine your family pooch when it knocks over the garbage.  This refuse naturally carries the rankest substances in the house.  He then proceeds to drag the items everywhere until he paws the offending target into oblivion. 

In this same way, I spent much of my youth finding the nastiest situations from which to learn my way.  These grueling ordeals taught me strong lessons.  And like the smells they metaphorically parallel, they had staying power.  But after a certain level of education, your senses become more refined.  You can no longer tolerate such extremes. 

At this time I had to learn how to discern between which lessons had only intense odors and which had intense messages.  One way I learned to do this is by measuring the effect of the lessons on those involved.  Drug and alcohol addiction for example are extremely intense lessons in both value and stench.  Each takes one into the pit of refuse. 

Yet once they are learned, obsession takes a different form.  It may be sports, or sex, or gambling.  It may be food, or even cleanliness.  Each time you master one level of obsession, your senses refine themselves to discover subtler cues.  Speech itself takes lifetimes to master.  We spend years on crafting its nuances. 

Consistent with the model mentioned above, you can easily see the affect of unrefined speech on its hearers.  Learn to speak well, and you have learned a powerful lesson.  Fail to do so, and feel its wrath.  Poor communication will hinder its possessor worse off than body odor or even intolerable ugliness. 

Thus, effect on self and others is a legitimate measure of the value of a lesson.  When you find yourself obsessing over the rankest smelling experience in your memory, try to see if it merits all of that effort.  Likely if you are reading this blog, there are other items which promise greater returns on less “SENSE-sational” effort.