Core Values Part Two
Knowing our personal core values helps us define our goals in life and as I suggested in Part One, affects what we hope to pass along to the next generation. Just as importantly, recognizing our core values can help us discern if we are living in such a way as to pursue some great vision, some noble purpose.
A Great Vision for Life
For me, my great vision is summed up in this simple sentence – “every life should have a noble purpose.” For loyal readers of this blog, this should be a familiar phrase to you. What gets me up in the morning, what directs all that I say and do and hope for? It’s finding my purpose and living to achieve that purpose.
Who am I willing to become? In what will I believe and in what will I find hope so that I may find my purpose and be resolute and consistent enough to spend my life accomplishing that purpose?
It’s like that exercise many of us have done – writing our own obituary. For what do I wish to be remembered? Will my life have made a difference in the lives of others? What did I accomplish? Did I find the success I had hoped for?
Getting Back to Core Values
As some of you know, I believe my purpose is “wherever and however I can to help in easing the suffering of others.” I hope I will be remembered as someone who brought a bit of light to the darkness most of us experience from time to time. This purpose of mine stems from my core value of unconditional positive regard for those with whom I come in contact. We all deserve acknowledgment of our humanity. We all deserve to know that we matter.
What am I willing to become to accomplish my vision, my purpose? What will I willingly sacrifice for the benefit of others? What reason do I have for what I do? It goes back to core values.
A Real Life Example
I am encouraged by the response of the students in Florida who have responded to the tragedy in their midst. Some collective value has kicked in that has resulted in their joint efforts to affect the political process. They seem unwilling to let the status quo overcome the events that have so affected their lives. Some greater good, some greater value is at work in those students. It is inspiring. They deserve support and affirmation.
I believe in the end that our collective, shared core values will triumph. In my faith tradition, there is a prayer written back in the 13th century. I share that prayer below as a reminder of some of my core values. If I embrace those values, I may actually be able to reinstate and affect our shared humanity and our common desire to find purposes that result in purposes worth living and dying to establish in our world. In response, we may set our sights on greater visions and greater purposes. This would be a legacy worth leaving to the next generation.
The Prayer of Saint Assissi
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace; where there is hatred. let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love; for it is in the giving that we receive, and in the pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
Do with this prayer as you will, but consider the power of common goals, common values, and our common humanity as we consider the potential power of the relationships we might make.
