What Do You Value In Life?

Nick Fallin, who plays the Guardian in the TV series with the same name, is a different kind of hero. A corporate attorney busted for using drugs, he is forced to put in 1,500 hours of community service as a children’s advocate with Legal Services of Pittsburgh. ... He shows up and works hard for the children he represents, learning in the process what he really values in life—relationships, personal responsibility, and justice for society’s weakest citizens.

Sometimes when we find ourselves in unexpected situations we are shaken into understanding what we really value in life. We have these “Aha” moments and wonder why we never realized it before. We are all so busy being and doing that we don’t often take moments to feel, to think, to get to the heart of what really matters to us in life. Sometimes it takes losing something or someone important to jolt us into seeing the real meaningful stuff of our lives. I recently lost my dog and I valued her tremendously. Fortunately it didn’t take losing her for me to realize that, I knew it all along. I feel good that she led a good, quality, happy life with a family who loved her. I am sure this ache in my chest will subside and I’ll smile instead of cry when I think of her, right? It did seem, though, like a good time to reflect on what I really value in life.

Like Nick Fallin, I value relationships – those with my family, my pets, my friends and many acquaintances. These relationships have added a tremendous value to my life - they have given me the opportunity to love, to feel loved and so, so much more. I value peace – times without conflict, without unnecessary noise, without stress or tension. I value work – doing something, anything, to make things better – for myself, for others – is incredibly satisfying whether the results of that work can be seen from the outside or if only I know it on the inside. I value justice and common sense - I’d like to see these two things practiced in tandem more often at times. I value freedom – big freedoms like we have in the United States and that are outlined in our Constitution and little or less talked about, maybe, freedoms – the choices and independence we have in our daily lives. Tea or coffee? Buy or rent? Big dog or little dog? Read a book or watch TV? Baseball or soccer or neither? Treadmill or stairmaster? I value that I have choices and the independence to make those choices. They enhance my living. I guess that’s really what I value – anything that enhances my truly living, feeling and enjoying life.

What do you really value in life?