Core
Values
“Honesty,
courage, kindness, wisdom, compassion—these can only be nourished in the soil
of time and attention and need experience and practice to come to harvest. They
are not commodities that can be bought, sold, or invested. They cannot be manufactured,
advertised, or marketed. Our core human values, the deepest and best of who we
are, require the nourishment of time and care, if we are to grow and flourish.”
Wayne
Muller (Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest; p.98; Bantam Books, 1999)
I was
looking at a series of photos of Vladimir Putin this morning—of him at long
tables and distant podiums with everyone else far away. At first, you might
think this is for social distancing, but you quickly realize it’s way more than
six feet. It is, instead, paranoia. Autocrats are always paranoid. They keep a
steady backward glance to make sure no one is creeping up on them. As murderous
as Putin is, that’s probably wise in some twisted way. His core values—at least
those listed above—are non-existent, so he believes them to be non-existent in
others too.
It’s
not that Putin is so different from others we know—the adage that absolute
power corrupts absolutely is still true. I’m not sure what happens to one’s
soul when greed for power takes over, but it leaves no room for any of the
softer core values. As Carl Jung said: “Where love rules, there is no [desire
for] power, and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the
shadow of the other.” Putin personifies that, and so have we at times.
In Sabbath,
Wayne Muller wrote about the fact that we are so caught up in our desire to
work and make money and rise to the top that we neglect our core values. He
says, “We have traded our time for money.” Everything we value requires
maintenance; we must exercise our bodies if we want them to be fit, and we must
exercise our core values if we want to remember what they are. Every day, we
see how easy and convenient it is to lose them; how easy it is to justify our
actions when we want something badly. Even if that something belongs to someone
else, we find ways to legitimize taking it if our core values are not in play. Mammals
are wired like that—just give a new chew-toy to a dog and watch the others in
the pack scheme to take it away. The only thing that separates us from them is
the value system we have established as sentient humans. And sometimes that
breaks down.
This is
not a condemnation of money—we all need it if we are to meet our needs and
enjoy our lives. But there are other things that are just as important—some, even
more important. Those are often the very things that get abandoned when we are
busy. Rhythm is the key—not packing our days so tightly that there is no time
to listen to others, or to enjoy the fruits of our labors like shared food and intimate
conversation. What is the point of rising to the top is there is no one to
share it with? Just look at the photos of Putin, one of the richest men in the
world, sitting at his long, long tables and decide for yourself if that’s truly
a life you would want.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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