Your Values Are Valuable

Your values matter, and so do mine. Think about how companies write up a mission statement and post it where everyone can see, inside the building and out, so staff and customers alike can tell what the place is actually trying to do. That statement doubles as a way to notice when people have drifted off course. We could use the same thing for ourselves. When you have no clear sense of what you're working toward, or when the people around you have none either, it's easy to wander without realizing it. Most of us keep a to-do list so the small important tasks don't slip away. Why not a values list too, something to glance at each morning the same way.

I began with the Ten Commandments. Then it struck me there was plenty more in the Bible I might want to live up to. After my recent baptism I sat down and wrote a set of resolutions. Here they are.

Hold your criticism unless saying it would genuinely help the other person, and even then, be careful. More often than not, what we criticize in others says more about our own trouble than theirs. I'll admit I still get thrown by people whose gender identity I can't easily place. I have to ask myself what that reaction says about me.

Everyone is one of God's children. That includes people with mental or physical disabilities, people without money, people who never got much schooling. They are owed the same respect we hand out so freely to the famous and the wealthy.

Don't gossip, and don't lend your ears to it either. If something is none of your business, it stays none of your business. The people near me gossip all the time, and I don't owe them my participation or my attention. The stronger move is to say plainly why I won't take part, then do what I said and walk away.

Fame, money, and power are not what I'm here to chase. Piling up possessions or collecting important friends shouldn't sit at the top of my list, and recognition for its own sake is a trap. When you can do a good turn quietly, do it quietly. Don't pick who to help based on what they can return; help whoever happens to be in front of you. Pass it along.

Keep the poison out of your head, the fault-finding and the withholding of affection. People act as if love were rationed, as if there were only so much to go around and we'd better hoard ours. I've come to think the opposite. Love grows with use; the more of it you hand over, the more of it you've got. Try keeping a tally sometime. Over a day, do more negative things leave your mouth and your mind than positive ones?

Anger belongs to rare occasions, both the showing of it and even the feeling. Watch the drivers with road rage: they stoke their own temper, and then some other fool does something stupid, and instead of letting it slide they react rashly and metal meets metal. Was any of it worth it.

Stuff your head with envy, regret, shame, worry, and doubt and you build yourself a little pool of filth you keep wading back into for no reason at all. Nobody else has to insult us or blow up at what we do; we manage to do it to ourselves. Kids absorb this fast, especially the ones who get called names and talked about as if they aren't in the room. A child learns to run himself down the same way the adults around him did. Before the child has had a shot at doing or learning much of anything, he's already been told what's beyond him. I've heard a grown-up announce to a room, with the kid standing right there, that the child has no common sense and never will.

Nursing a grudge over someone else's cruelty, a hate crime, say, especially one aimed at us, only pins us in place and keeps us from moving on. Life isn't always fair and won't pretend to be. A boss can let you go for no decent reason, maybe because you threaten him, maybe because he's saving your chair for a friend or a relative. When a job ends it often comes down to who moves first, the one who quits or the one who's shown the door, and getting fired can land like a slap out of nowhere. There's even a question of who comes out ahead, the one doing the firing or the one who resigns on his own terms and gets to say his piece on the way out.

Treat yourself the way you'd want someone else to treat you. Plenty of us are kinder to other people, and to our pets, than we ever are to ourselves. You're worth something. Look after yourself properly. You belong to me.

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