All life demands struggle. Those who have everything given to them become lazy, selfish, and insensitive to the real values of life. The very striving and hard work that we so constantly try to avoid is the major building block in the person we are today. – Pope Paul VI
I’ve been doing a lot of research and study about values, what they are, how they affect us, and how they control us.
Welcome to part two of the values series. The first part, Values – That is the Question, asked some very basic questions, mostly concerning me and my own values. I wanted to know, I need to know what makes me tick, what I am, who I am, and where am I going? But more than that I realized that self-improvement, the basis of my website and this blog, needs to start somewhere. So the burning, and I mean burning question became: Where is somewhere?
The answer to all self-improvement begins with Values. You must know your values before you can improve yourself. Values are the foundation of you. Like a house is built upon a foundation so must your life be built upon your values. The stronger the foundation, the stronger the house. The stronger your values the stronger you become. How do I know? My best evidence for this statement is me.
I have six decades of self-imposed failure behind me and I am sick and tired of it. I should have made my mark during the 1980’s, the Reagan revolution, but I didn’t. In fact I did just the opposite. I refused to learn, refused to mature, refused to listen (especially to my wife). I was absolutely stupid, selfish, ignorant, and determined it was my way or no way. I was such an ignoramus.
But the past is the past and I cannot change it, I must live with it. However that does not mean I cannot use the lessons I learned yesterday and apply them to both today and tomorrow. So that is what I am doing. I cannot afford to waste time, I have already wasted too much of it. Hence I must work smarter if I am to achieve my dreams of yesterday. This is a painful lesson I am learning now that I am in the twilight of my life.
So how do I do this? How do I apply the lessons of yesteryear to today? Better question is what are the lessons of yesteryear? Where do I start?
The starting point is fairly evident, I start with my childhood. Not the best childhood I admit, but not the worst either. Middle of the road maybe? Yeah, middle of the road.
As I mentioned in part 1, which I shall repeat here: “I did not apply values to my existence, nor did I pay any attention to values. There are many reasons for this but bottom line is, during my childhood the values concerning money was never taught, but the evils of having money was pushed down my throat so often I didn’t know I was gagging…”.
We give to our children the values we were taught when we were kids. So if we were deprived of proper values how can we expect our children to have appropriate values, when we ourselves don’t? As adults we are ignorant where values are concerned and we, in our ignorance, deliver to our off-spring the disadvantage of having improper values while disregarding good solid values. The kicker is we don’t think of values, what they are or how they influence/affect us. If we think of value at all it is in the material sense and not the spiritual realm.
Now before I go any farther some “value clarifications” need to be made but let us start with a dictionary definition of the word: Value. There are distinct descriptions of this word and some of these are:
- Importance, worth, the usefulness of something.
- One’s judgement of what is important in life.
- A person’s principles or standards of behavior.
Now that we have the “dictionary” definition let us explore this concept further:
When we speak of values exactly what do we mean? What exactly are we talking about? Why are values important? How do values affect us as a society, as an individual? Can we live without values, both as a nation and as an individual?
During my research I engaged the hypothesis that values can be broken down into two distinct classifications. These are:
- Values we give to our business, customers, clients, other people, the world.
- Values we give to ourselves and our children.
Both of these classifications are important, for different reasons. Yet both are the same in many respects. As an adult it is imperative we determine these values and assign them to the proper category. And the second task is much easier said than done, not impossible, just difficult.
Furthermore I came to the conclusion that these classifications can be broken down into two additional groups, or sub-classifications:
- Physical values
- Spiritual/Mental values
Let us start with the two top classifications before we get into the sub-classifications.
Giving value to our boss, business, customers, work, and the like is pretty straight forward and simple. Honesty, integrity, fairness, respect are just some of the values we bring to the work environment. There are of course a lot more and as we continue with this series we will explore some of these in more detail.
However, self-examination is one of the hardest task a human will ever undertake. While many business values also apply to self, we have a tendency to undermine ourselves, to sabotage ourselves as it were. We find it much easier for someone else to “tell us” what our values should be rather than look deep within ourselves and determine what our own personal values are.
This is something the politically savvy has learned and learned well. These political hucksters are using our weakness, the weakness of self-examination, against us. In this manner we can be controlled, manipulated, handled as it were, into doing the deeds the political class dictates for us. This can be anything from voting the way a politician wants to rioting in the streets. It means following a set agenda, an agenda which can be our detriment, and at this time in our history, is becoming. And we the people allow the political slim machine to get away with it because we, as individuals find self-examination too difficult to engage in.
Life is difficult and the political machine, the political slim balls make it more difficult for us, and they do it on purpose. These con-artist really believe, and with good reason, that you will do exactly what they want you to do, live the way they want you to, and worship them as gods. And they are succeeding with your blessing.
Rather than lift people up, out of the slums of despair these politicians do everything possible to bring the successful down and force them to live in the slums of America. While they, the elites, bathe in glory, telling themselves, and believing it, that they really care about you. Meanwhile your life is miserable and in many cases, despicable, until you employ a value system to your life.
Values, personal values, are more than just words, they are a roadmap, a set of directions you use to guide your life. Without them you become lost, you feel alone in the universe, and you drift with the current whichever way it may take you. Without values you have no control over your life, the direction of your life. A ship without a rudder. A perfect patsy for the politically ill (crooked politicians).
Values are controlled by emotions and the liberal left has a monopoly on the emotional aspect of humanity. Hence they abuse this power they took and use the dark values, yes dark values, to control and manipulate you, the nation, and the world.
As you can see the world of values is huge and we have just begun our journey. There are many components of this post I have not touched on yet, but I will in future posts. Consider this post a teaser for things yet to arrive.
Hence in the next post we will continue to explore this world and if I do my job right, I might even learn a thing or two about myself.
G.
