CONSIDER MAKING YOUR STATEMENT OF VALUES

Much has been said lately of values, especially family values. The word, value, has several shades of meaning. I'm sure when we're speaking of family values we're speaking of standards, principles or qualities considered worthwhile or desirable. Families do not hold to be desirable the same behavior, rituals or standards. For example, for one family it may seem to be of value for every member to be at the table at the same time at every meal to exchange ideas, speak of accomplishments or disappointments, rejoice with or bolster each other up as the case may be.

In this latter part of the century and as far as the eye can see, this three times a day for family communication is becoming archaic, arcane or an anachronism.

Still it was once a great family value and I think still is or could be. I stand to be labeled "Harriet and Ozzied."

There is another shade of meaning to the term value. It is worth in usefulness or importance to the possessor; utility or merit. Here I can write with more assurance for I know what is useful and important to me in a tangible way.

Consider my paring knife. It is made or molded altogether of steel not a wooden or plastic handle that is joined on by screws that come loose or may crack apart and fill up with grease and grime. No. It is all one, fits my hand so cozily even though the shape of my hand changes over periods of time. I think I might have made a good door-to-door salesperson for such a knife. It is a thing of value to me.

In sharp contrast (no pun), a winter sunset is a thing of great value to me. It is fleeting, maybe lasts 25 minutes, but it lingers in my heart and mind's vision for a long time. Since most of my sunsets have occurred right where I now live, I have learned when, where and how to make the most of them. First I sit by the kitchen window when the sun is beginning to lower. It tinges the sky with a pink-pearly shade like that inside a sea shell. The lower it gets the deeper the pink. Then the pink begins to be infused with gold as if some invisible sky creature is pouring pure gilt into the pink. And, as if not to be outdone, especially if there are a few streaks of clouds, other invisible sky creatures pour in drops of green, lavender, cerise, azure, crimson. The sky seems a display of glimmering ribbons emanating from the sun that is sinking ever faster behind a filigree of winter trees. As if to promise that it will be back in a matter of hours, it lights up more intensely before it disappears, with a wink, into its hilly bed. At that point I hasten upstairs where I can see it again, from a west window, perform an encore of its last act. I hold these winter sunsets to be a thing of great value to me.

The writer on a calendar for a local hospital has coined the phrase "a statement of values." I think, if while the presidential campaign was going on and the term "family values" came to the forefront for a short while before fading away into more voluble bombast, someone had made a statement of what families values were, many would not be left wondering what was meant. Not that they didn't vaguely know, but to hear or read it in words would have helped.

It would be a good thing for everyone, school children and all, to make a statement of values his or her values write them down; figuratively speaking, bind them to their foreheads as did the Jewish people of old with their phylacteries. Maybe some still do.

People need absolutes, unmovable, unshakable things to take a stand on. If one cannot verbally explain why he takes such a stand, that is all right. We might come up with a "Yogi Berraism." If it is so, it is so, and that's so it is so!

Why not make your statement of values?

REJOICE!