30 Days To A Better Man, Day 1 - Define Your Core Values

30 Days to a Better Man, Day 1 - Define Your Core Values

     March seems to be my month for this - attempting the "30 Days to a Better Man" challenge from The Art of Manliness. My life is challenging enough at the moment, but as the Roman New Year begins on March 1st, and it is near the beginning of spring and thus is a time symbolic of renewal, I feel the need to undertake the challenge yet again.

     The first task - day 1 - is to "define your core values." I have done this many times, and while I sometimes shift around my priorities within these core values, the values themselves remain the same. Some of them lack a single English word that encompasses all that I mean to say, so I have some that are split, like #3 Reason/Education.

      As my family and I stand at a crossroads right now, and we are struggling to define what our future should look like, and what Tanya and I want to do with the next phase of our lives, my values stand at the forefront of my decisions.

Here is the prioritized list:
1. Integrity - Without my personal sense of honor and integrity, any other values would be meaningless. Integrity must come first!
2. Family - Besides my sense of integrity, my family is the most important thing to me (what good would I be to my family without my integrity?). I have found that honoring the family is a delicate balancing act at times - like spending time away from one's family in order to support one's family. But my family - my wife Tanya, and my sons Andrew and Eli - are the core of my life.
3. Reason/Education - The life of the mind is of extremely high importance to me, and I honor with this value both the faculty of reason and the acquisition of material for reason to process (through education and learning). Right now I am considering an attempt to go back to school because this is something that has not been a formal part of my life for almost 15 years. I feel a powerful call to return to the hallowed halls of academia . . .
4. Philosophy/Spirituality - Nearly on par with reason and education is the care of the soul - I actually consider both to be different aspects of the same phenomenon, but there really is no way to express this properly in English. I have pursued philosophy (particularly Stoicism) over spirituality and religion for a long time because my profession as teacher has demanded neutrality from me in such matters. My religious beliefs (a form of the cultus deorum Romanorum) and valued spiritual teachings (such as those found in Unitarian Universalism) are of vital importance to me, and yet I have allowed them to be placed to one side for the purposes of my career, which I have come to feel is a mistake. I have always felt called to the clergy, and I am now considering the possibilities of seminary. These are the things that provide the human soul with its nourishment and comfort.
5. Discipline - A value on which I have always prided myself, and yet which has always been of uneven temper in my soul. I list this as the last core value in part because it is the one I feel needs the most work.