Category: Unit 2

Values

Family

Friendship

Enjoyment

Health

Personal Development

Loyalty

Integrity

Security

Location

Leadership

Community

Service

Personal Accomplishment

Expertness

Prestige

Independence

Wisdom

Creativity

Power

Wealth

 

Reflecting on my activities for the day, it was easy for me to come up with times when I exemplified my most important values – family, friendship, enjoyment, health, and personal development. I try to hold sincere conversations with my family and closest friends throughout the day, whether via phone or in person. I also try to put these people before myself, but not to the extent that my third most important value, enjoyment, is destructed. I believe that being happy and enjoying life is one of the greatest tasks that we, as humans, can take on, so I search for that daily. Health is a less arbitrary value, when compared to enjoyment and personal development, but I think it is a very important value. One must maintain decent, if not great, health to be able to exhibit any other values. Lastly, personal development allows one to learn from mistakes or positive experiences and grow. This growth will hopefully allow for the practicing of other values.

The majority of these belief patterns were inherited from my family, but they were certainly modified by my personal self. For example, a sincere conversation with a friend or family membrane may differ from person-to-person. I know my mom would rather speak to me over the phone, but my younger sister would rather rely on text messaging to share her thoughts. In response to the second question, I do not think any of these inherited belief patterns lose full validity in my thinking. My idea of enjoyment may differ from my parents’ or sisters,’ but the pursing of that enjoyment remains valid.

A few goals that I have for myself that I have yet to pursue include graduating from college, finding a burning passion for some occupation within the medical field, and reaching optimum health status. Standing in the way of graduating is time and needed credit, but I plan to overcome both in the next year and a half. In the way of finding my future career is lack of experience, but I also plan to lessen over these next several months. Reaching and maintaining a very healthy lifestyle is burdened by a lack of self-motivation and determination, but I plan to work on both over these next weeks.

Overall, I found this excerpt quite interesting, as I do not always choose to think about my own personal values, which will become the basis of my post that follows:

In the excerpt, Lewis writes, “Without clearly focused values, it is probably impossible to lead a purposeful and satisfying life,” suggesting that without awareness of one’s own values, life cannot be meaningful (p. 18). I would have to disagree with this statement because I do not believe conscious awareness of values is necessary to reach fulfillment in life. Whether we know it or not, we all have values that help direct our life choices, but regardless of our awareness of them, or lack thereof, their effects in our lives will still remain. While reading this piece, I did much reflection and could not think of a single time I chose to formulate my values without having been asked. However, I do understand that many people do perform this task, and perhaps on a regular basis, which I do believe to be advantageous.

To support my argument, I have a second line from Lewis’s work that I do agree with: “… most of the argument is over words, not the underlying concepts the words are supposed to represent” (p. 12). Here exists evidence that values may not reside in the conscious portion of the brain. We are able to choose the words we speak, but we may not be able to consciously choose the values underlying those words.

Lewis’s lists of basic and synthetic mental modes of “knowing” things were very thorough, and I enjoyed reading through the paired articulations. Lewis notes that humans formulate values based on a combination of these mental modes and that these mental modes have varying degrees of impact from person to person. I agree that this is true, and that this variance is what results in disagreement and “incessant quarrelsomeness of human values” (p. 3).

 

 

 

Lewis, H. (1990). A Question of Values: Six Ways We Make the Personal Choices That Shape Our Lives. Axios Press.