The Value of Values

The Value of Values (excerpt)

The cover of this book contains two illustrations that I believe will help you to understand the messages I hope to convey.

The picture of a father and son symbolizes the unconditional love and trust that can exist between a parent and child. It is a time in a child’s life that deeply sewn values can be developed as they are passed from parent to child without apprehension.

The child in this picture is in his formative years. It is a time when he is totally focused on the lessons being taught by the people closest to him. It is a time in which the values established will last as filters for what is right or wrong throughout the remainder of his life.

In these years a child’s capacity for happiness and satisfaction in established. The pathway to greater harmony throughout the world can begin to take hold if all parents everywhere are able to pass on the best values possible to their children.

It is a time in which the ideals of mankind are established. It can be a time of hope and promise.

The tree in the picture symbolizes a value and its many extensions.

Both values and the tree are born from the roots that are cultivated in the formative years. Just as a trunk grows strong and supports each branch, a value grows strong and supports each thought. From the trunk grow thousands of branches; from a value grow thousands of interpretations, applications, personality traits, habits, attributes, religious beliefs, political beliefs, and ideologies.

When we see the tree we see all that is visible above ground. We do not see the roots from which it came and we frequently give less awareness to the trunk than to the many branches and leaves.

Too often people view values in much the same way as the tree. They see the interpretations of the value, (the branches and leaves), but not the core value, (the trunk of the tree).

When people focus less on core values in favor of the many interpretations, applications, personality traits, habits, attributes, religious beliefs, political beliefs, or ideologies, the result is certain disconnect amongst people.

The thousands of possible value interpretations cannot possibly be matched from person to person, just as the thousands of branches and leaves on a tree cannot be matched from one to another.

Rather than uniting around the similarity of our values that are relatively simple and far less numerous, people focus on the many dissimilar interpretations.

A major premise of this book is that we need to set our sights differently. We need to focus on the commonality of a few important values, and learn to understand and sometimes disregard the many “branches”.

In so doing we will begin a transition from an issue-based society to a value-based society in which we can live in harmony.

The vehicle for this transformation will be improved value establishment within our children and within our children’s children.

Please join me at the threshold of this all-important transition into the world of values.

Ed Gagnon