Value, values, valuable
When I think of what I value, it feels like a deep understanding of my personal truths. It is an accumulation of knowledge, both intrinsically and from how I was taught in my immediate family and from my life experiences, that has shaped how I see and understand wealth. Because what I value is my wealth. A wealth that will keep regenerating, adding to the richness of my future children and their environments.
For me, wealth is not a physical or material measure but rather a determination of how I placed my choices. That is, where I put my energy, my time, my attention and how I saw my long-term vision. I suppose at the centre of my values and vision was always the well-being of myself and my children.
My values in every sense and measure was and still is centred around care, opportunity and sustainability.
What I value.
I value the clean air, the clear fresh water, the giant trees that stood close to all the places I lived and I value the insect life quietly going about their business, especially the bees who give us life.
I value my mind. I am grateful I was able to figure out how it communicated with my Spirit and my sense of peace and happiness. I value how I have learnt and continue to learn. I value how I feel about my Self. I value how I interact with life and how life interacts with me. It is a free-flowing dance with its own tune, its own rhythm and its own groove. A dance I keep refining as I go.
I value my freedom and how I take care of this good fortune. And with that, I value every gladness, every glimpse of the people who come my way, stay awhile and eventually pass me by.
I value how I express my love. I value how I stood defiant when I needed to, out of love.
I value the opportunities that came my way and how I took those opportunities.
I value how I have grown over my life and how with each mistake I have learnt how to hold my aches and pains with the tender touch of love and forgiveness.
I value life’s precious moments. I value the privilege of being a parent. A privilege not everyone is able to share in. I value I have children with good strong healthy minds and who understand how to take care of their well-being. I value I can watch them grow and mature with each passing season.
I value the life I was given and that I followed the path I was given with tremendous strength, courage, tenacity and grace. I value my connection to all of life and for that I feel most honoured. There is no order to how I value the meaning to my life. They are just as they came to my mind and fell onto this page.
If it no longer there, then what we have lost feels that much more valuable.
And so for that, I find it is my Mind that is my most valuable treasure. The measure of my entire wealth.
How I loved feels valuable. The relationships that came and went, and my memories of those relationships. I cannot change the past but I can change how I feel about the past.
Human life and the natural world feels valuable because we live in a vulnerable world where love and hate collide, dispersing its erroneous energy towards the gaze of destruction leaving no hint of the beauty that once lay bare for all to enjoy. And so, I take it all in. What once may have been and what I am seeing now.
My vital energy is valuable. It is my source and my resource for drawing on my aging vitality. I have mourned its premature loss and so I take pleasure in all I am given and give as a way to sustain the light that keeps me shining.
Having an agile and strong body feels valuable. As long as I can still climb the money bars, put my foot behind my head, walk long distances, rock hop and rock climb I feel alive, energised and impish. Age has no barriers. But the Mind does.
How I lived and walked my path to this point feels valuable. I have no regrets. I’ve been given the full range of colours as well as all the various shades of greys, from light to dark. It has sustained me. I have become taller, wiser, bolder and more courageous with the passing of each decade.
Each moment of my life feels valuable. I don’t look too far into the future. I have learnt to stay in the present, to savour the memories and to let the unknown be known when it is here.
Values are to me a shared exchange of equal measure.
How I honour you is just as I honour my Self.