Sunglasses
A couple of months ago, I got a new pair of glasses. It wasn't that my prescription had changed much, but I had been wearing the old pair for so long that the lenses were covered in aberrations. While this doesn't really hinder your ability to see, it can make it difficult to see things clearly. It's easy to get complacent and believe you have clarity in your perception of things, especially when all of the scratches on the lenses have aggregated slowly over an extended period of time.
Sometimes you just need to force yourself to get new glasses, even if it's time you feel could be better spent doing anything else. Even if you've gotten used to way you think you look in the mirror.
I was asked recently what my values are, and where they came from. I had never given this a great deal of thought. Like most people, my values came from my upbringing and the set of experiences that I have had since then, but these have been internalized within myself, and never formally brought to light to be examined.
Very recently, I decided that one absolutely must be explicit in this process. It's easy to let your own sense of your values emerge naturally from your behavior. Your behavior proceeds from who you are. This is the approach I've always taken; for the most part, I am who I have always been. This has led me to behave a certain way. An onlooker (like myself) could determine what my values are from how I act.
I'm sure there are gobs of self-help books that touch upon this very thing, and like most of the trite points I make in my writing, I'm not going to let this stop me, or try to pretend as though I'm saying anything new.
In brief, I've come to believe from bitter experience that this flow of who we are to how we act to value determination is backwards. Values must be decided upon in advance; actions should proceed from these; it is from these actions that one's character is determined.
So what are my values? I'm still figuring this out, but life has taught me some very important lessons in the last couple of months, albeit in what seems to be a very odd and roundabout way.
Honesty: in recent months I've been the victim of duplicity by people close to me, and have caused others harm by my own duplicity. There are probably situations that call for little white lies, perhaps to the spare feelings of others. Where this line is seems to be a recurring theme in narratives. To lie with the intent of manipulating others to self-serving ends is wrong. If you cannot be fully honest with yourself first, you cannot be fully honest with others.
Courage: while I've always been fond of sitting and staring out the window, reflecting on what I've read, philosophizing about right and wrong, it means little if you don't stand up and take action on behalf of what you think is right. I'm not going to set the dividing line between right and wrong correctly in all circumstances, but this uncertainty on my part is a poor excuse for passively allowing what I think is wrong to continue. Subjectivity be damned; right must make might.
Fidelity: I just got out of a 12 year relationship. In hindsight, I know now that I let my own eyes wander too much during this time period. I recently read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, a brutally honest book about the human condition as it concerns our foibles in romantic relationships. In it, the author espouses the benefit of fidelity in roughly these words: that it coalesces into a single, unified whole what would otherwise be a lifetime of thousands of split-second, capricious impressions. At the risk of moralizing, the latter damages us. To escape this trap of human nature, and embrace seeing only one, is among the most wonderful things we can experience.
Life is most beautiful when the sun is shining, but you can only fully appreciate this beauty if you see things clearly.
Sometimes you just need to force yourself to get new glasses, even if it's time you feel could be better spent doing anything else. Even if you've gotten used to way you think you look in the mirror.
I was asked recently what my values are, and where they came from. I had never given this a great deal of thought. Like most people, my values came from my upbringing and the set of experiences that I have had since then, but these have been internalized within myself, and never formally brought to light to be examined.
Very recently, I decided that one absolutely must be explicit in this process. It's easy to let your own sense of your values emerge naturally from your behavior. Your behavior proceeds from who you are. This is the approach I've always taken; for the most part, I am who I have always been. This has led me to behave a certain way. An onlooker (like myself) could determine what my values are from how I act.
I'm sure there are gobs of self-help books that touch upon this very thing, and like most of the trite points I make in my writing, I'm not going to let this stop me, or try to pretend as though I'm saying anything new.
In brief, I've come to believe from bitter experience that this flow of who we are to how we act to value determination is backwards. Values must be decided upon in advance; actions should proceed from these; it is from these actions that one's character is determined.
So what are my values? I'm still figuring this out, but life has taught me some very important lessons in the last couple of months, albeit in what seems to be a very odd and roundabout way.
Honesty: in recent months I've been the victim of duplicity by people close to me, and have caused others harm by my own duplicity. There are probably situations that call for little white lies, perhaps to the spare feelings of others. Where this line is seems to be a recurring theme in narratives. To lie with the intent of manipulating others to self-serving ends is wrong. If you cannot be fully honest with yourself first, you cannot be fully honest with others.
Courage: while I've always been fond of sitting and staring out the window, reflecting on what I've read, philosophizing about right and wrong, it means little if you don't stand up and take action on behalf of what you think is right. I'm not going to set the dividing line between right and wrong correctly in all circumstances, but this uncertainty on my part is a poor excuse for passively allowing what I think is wrong to continue. Subjectivity be damned; right must make might.
Fidelity: I just got out of a 12 year relationship. In hindsight, I know now that I let my own eyes wander too much during this time period. I recently read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, a brutally honest book about the human condition as it concerns our foibles in romantic relationships. In it, the author espouses the benefit of fidelity in roughly these words: that it coalesces into a single, unified whole what would otherwise be a lifetime of thousands of split-second, capricious impressions. At the risk of moralizing, the latter damages us. To escape this trap of human nature, and embrace seeing only one, is among the most wonderful things we can experience.
Life is most beautiful when the sun is shining, but you can only fully appreciate this beauty if you see things clearly.