Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Do you know your values?
Do you know what your values are? Do you know which one is more important to you? Have you ever ranked your values?
Knowing our values is very important and yet, no one teaches us how to do it. Every time I am in traffic, I think of this very point, when I see “Support our Troops” bumper stickers in some cars. Then I start to pay attention and I find a lot of little hints about people’s values, just by reading other stickers and license plates.
Sometimes, I even go to the extreme of quantifying people’s values: how many W’04 I see as opposed to “Don’t blame me, I voted for Kerry,” among many others, of course. It is a fun exercise that tells me how different we all are; and most of all, tell me that these differences are mostly due to our different values.
So, what if you are a patriot and your co-worker isn’t? Or perhaps, you don’t mind white lies while your life-partner can’t tolerate them. I can give you an example that just happened to me. I went to pick up my son at school, and the only place available to park was in a 2-car blue zone. There was a car waiting in that area, not in the spots, but transversally.
Before I parked my car in the next blue space, I told the mother driving the other car that we would have more space to move and park our cars if, instead of parking across, she would park in the blue space that was unoccupied. She was taking “road” space and provoking a little jam in that area. She responded to me in an outraged mode that she would never occupy a blue parking space. Her tone was also asking me: what kind of person are you, anyway? Upon hearing her remark, I asked myself what was the difference between parking in the space or across? She was preventing someone to park there anyway!
Now, mind you that no one, I repeat, not one single person has ever occupied either spot, ever! During my 4 years of daily picking my son up, and attending events and business, and so on, I have never seen a “disabled” license plate in any of the two spots. That means, that I know no one will park there, especially at pick up time, so it matters not if I wait for my son inside my car in that very spot. Granted, it doesn’t matter; the law is the law.
But hey, "authority rests upon reason" or hasn’t anyone heard of "The Little Prince"? If one is inside the car, when and if the need arises, one can immediately remove the car from the place and let the due person occupy the space. In fact, waiting inside the car is not really parking; it is called standing. Anyway. So this is a good example of how we deal with our values.
Now, how we do deal with the people who so much disagree with us either with big issues or one little tiny detail in our daily lives? I have a good exercise that teaches everyone to clarify and rank their values, and hopefully, allow people to understand that it is precisely these differences that make us more interesting. Perhaps, in this way we may learn to tolerate others more easily.
