Evergreen Values
There are core values, as old as the World itself and as long lasting as the World itself. There are those values if you please and they are still there if you don’t please.
If water is to boil at a certain temperature, then it will boil and take no heed whether you like it or not.
Generosity
Being generous will always lift people up, being tight will always make them miserable. Being generous, you will always feel good in your own company. But when you are tight, then you can’t avoid being with that tight person all of the time. That person will sit with you in a taxi, live with you in the same hotel room wherever you decide to travel. You can’t avoid meeting that person and you can’t escape, because that person is you.
MYTH ABOUT GENEROSITY: the World, people, colleagues, family, acquaintances expect me to be generous.
TRUTH ABOUT GENEROSITY: I owe it to myself to be generous. I do myself a great service if I am generous.
Always Only Two Options In Important Choices
There are core values. And there are always only two options to choose from.
OPTION 1: I accept the values and benefit from using them.
OPTION 2: I reject the values and, by doing so, I miss out on real living of my life.
Now, if I pick Option 2, I have billions of secondary options for choosing substitutes. Then it might seem like a real freedom of choice. Only whatever the substitutes, they are equally useless. It does not matter the least which sub-option I choose if I don’t choose the real thing, i.e. Option 1.
The choice that matters is always only between two options. Sub-options of choosing one of the substitutes are not important. The real choice is only between Option 1 and Option 2.
If I pick Option 1, which I actually did many years ago, then I make a huge step towards full value life. If I pick Option 2, then I am in Hell, and I don’t need any other hell. A full Hell is already turned on and at a full swing in my life. It does not matter which kind of Hell, which particular substitute of real value I then choose. I suffer all the agonizing things that it has in store. The only way to escape the here and now Hell is returning to the values, to Option 1.
The good news is that that can be done any time while you are still alive. But if you die without having changed your mind, then, I think, you seal it. I am not sure whether there is still a possibility to change it, I have never visited the after death world. And, unfortunately, among my friends and acquaintances, there is none who would have returned 😀
But what keeps you from picking the right option here and now?
More Than Two Options – A Bad Sign
If I don’t choose the values that work, and for the sake of free will for humans I am allowed to, then it does not matter what I choose instead.
If instead of being generous, I decide to build a house bigger than my neighbor’s, then in my deepest deep I will feel miserable. And I will feel equally miserable if I decide to buy a fancy car, more expensive than my neighbor’s, or if I buy gold bars and bury them in the backyard. So it does not matter the least what exactly I choose for the substitute. If I do not choose the real thing, all the substitutes will make me equally miserable. Generosity lifts me up, vanity will make me miserable.
So if I find myself in a position where I have plenty of options to choose from, chances are that I have already picked the wrong option from the two significant ones.
There are core values. They will never get outdated, never be covered in rust, never play a less important role in human lives than they did in the very beginning of all things.
Integrity
One of the core values is Integrity. It is a mandatory prerequisite for a life worth living. When we lose our integrity, we lose everything. In fact, we are not living any more. If we are still kept alive, I believe, it is only because Providence wants to give us a second chance – a chance to restore our Integrity before we die.
INTEGRITY MYTH 1 : People around us want us to be honest because they will bank in from that, and we will be handy for them to abuse.
INTEGRITY TRUTH 1 : We are the ones benefiting from honesty. It will give us peace of mind, pride for being who we are, strength to stand in trials.
INTEGRITY MYTH 2 : Integrity is less important nowadays than it was before.
INTEGRITY TRUTH 2: Integrity is as important as ever before, and the loss of Integrity can destroy you now as it was also before and will always be.
INTEGRITY MYTH 3 : If people have been dishonest towards us, we should treat them the same way.
INTEGRITY TRUTH 3 : If people are dishonest, that is their responsibility as long as we keep our Integrity. When we lose our Integrity, then we become responsible for the dishonesty as well.
Recognize Core Values
Some other core values are Reliability, Friendliness, Humbleness, Modesty – I think you can continue this list. All of them are important, all of them are evergreen.
My observation is that the core values have always something with Love to do. It feels like you have to sacrifice something for the benefit of others. If you e.g. want to be reliable, you have to reject a more tempting offer. But by doing so, you are the winner in a longer run. For that choice, you will respect yourself, you will have positive rumor, you will keep your integrity. Yes, others will benefit too, but the main beneficiary will always be yourself.
I assume that core values have come to be because they imply win-win situations. Living by core values is equally essential for well-being of a single person and for the nation as a whole.
False values will often promise you some benefit at the expense of others. You may even get some short term benefit. But in the longer run, you will feel miserable, inferior, abused and humiliated. False values is your gateway to Hell.
Pick Option 1, choose to live by eternal values. Then you will be able to find Joy and Happiness, you will see your health improving. It will feel like being really alive.