What Do You Value?

What Do You Value?

 

You know at different parts of your life, you have different epiphanies. You hear the same thing twenty times, but it’s not until you’re in the shower or wake up at midnight that it suddenly sinks in, the lightbulb clicks, and you GOT IT?! Values and morals, moral compasses, every analogy of values this and morals that, and it takes a worksheet of twenty-five or so values, and I have to pick the top ten and rank them in order of my life. How do I want my life to be driven?

It sinks in again. How have I let myself drift so far away from any goals I had at one point? Did I even have goals since being an astronaut in kindergarten? When did all my dreams and aspirations get side-tracked, and I just let it happen? Is this what happens to everyone? I’m certain most of us don’t wake up living the dream we dreamed of five, ten, twenty years ago. But how did it happen?

For me, I feel like I started as a bright-eyed little boy with big potential, and I’m just now, almost three decades later starting to believe in myself again. Looking at homework from my new therapist and going to my new job, I’m starting to have hope that maybe I can have fun some days. Maybe I can change my values to start aligning my life with what I hope it to be instead of waiting for it to change for no reason.

Believe me, I did a values indicator/ranking something or other in Partial hospitalization both times I was in it, and it probably hit then too. But there’s something about being reminded of where you are and where you could go if you wanted to that makes you want to go somewhere. I told my husband today that there’s two choices you can make at any time no matter what situation you’re in. You can either do nothing, or you can make a decision to change SOMETHING. And it’s the people who change something, whether it turns out for the good or the bad, that deserve the applause, because at least they tried.

Recently, my trying has paid off… mostly. I have some super generous folks to thank for that, and a lot of pure luck! But I can’t say that “I pulled myself up by my bootstraps,” because I didn’t. I had help. I had privilege, both as mostly in majority cultures and societally, and I’m sorry for that. I now get to work helping underprivileged families find help paying for childcare among other resources for their families, so I’m thankful for that! Though it hasn’t been due to my positive attitude, thinking positively helps you find more to smile about just like thinking about blue cars helps you spot blue cars more easily in traffic. I am trying to find small moments to smile about, especially on the rough days.

This is about values. Oh, right. What is important to you? What drives you every day? Not the physical things, but the ideas and beliefs that make you who you are and what you stand for. What would you die for? I have a very deep belief in my bones that injustice is just plain wrong. I don’t know how to describe it, but certain situations not just claw at me, but cause me to act. But I don’t go to protests or rallies. Safety is another top value of mine, as well as peace. Honestly, a little absolutely terrified that I would die by a masked nameless person and injustice would still go on. That is one of my guilty fears is the selfishness I have. I don’t know when it happened, but being a kid, I would gladly die in the jungle in Jesus’ name under the brutal hands of tribesman and it would never be known. But something about a peace rally turned violent scares me to the bones.

I value freedom and independence. If they decide to take those away like they are in the middle of doing, I don’t know how society folds from “normal” to “civil war” in this day and age, but I will continue helping people the best ways I know how. Because helping people is all I want to do.

What do you value?