What is Your Highest Value?

When I was young (many moons ago, Enabran), I gave some thought to what I would consider to be my highest value.

First, I thought of "knowledge." Then I thought, well, a lot of things you THINK are knowledge, aren't. Then I decided it was "truth." And that seemed to be a good choice, since the University of Texas tower, where I was going to college, had engraved in it, "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set ye free," or some such. Truth would also encompass true knowledge.

But in the past few years, I have been deciding there is a higher value. Blasphemy! Would could be higher than truth? But I was deciding there is a higher one for me, and I have been calling it kindness, for lack of a better word. Or maybe, "humanity," but that was an even worse word.

In the game the other night, I asked a young friend what he considered his greatest value - without telling him mine, or any of the above. After some thought, and reaching around for the best word, he chose "compassion."

That was it! That was the word I was looking for these past few years! And compassion would encompass kindness. (And I was pleased that we shared this highest value.)

What is your highest value? Or values?

coco

Freedom

That's a damn good one, Kendra!

coco

ULTIMATE POWER OVER EVERYTHING IN THE WOLRD, GALAXY, UNIVERSE!! MUWHAHAHAH!

I mean, I dunno..

3,498,567. But mainly because I got bored.

Integrity, honesty, individualism

Thanks. To me it's the one from which all else follows
Compassion is definately on my short-list though.

BTW This is an excellent thread.

Compassion ranks up there for me too. Along with humor.

$19.99

that is the most succesful price point ever made

any higher you risk an impulse buy

and in legit response

first thought is balance

because without , one can't appreciate things in a meaningful perspective (as in, you cannot rejoice in peace when you know not the hell of war).

deep question, wasn't expecting that. if I change my mind upon reflection, I will return

and maybe it isn't my highest value, just something that gives life some meaning

Self-awareness.

If you're self-aware, a lot of bullshit just drops by the wayside. Know your strengths and your faults. Know why you do the things you do. Understand why people see you as they do, or at least make an effort to. Examine your psyche instead of trying to look for answers in everyone else. I think only in self-awareness can there be true personal strength or strength of character. Lying to others is bad enough, but lying to yourself is the worse offense.

"So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love." (1 Cor. 13:13)

Honesty.

Merlin said, "When a man lies he murders some part of the world." I believe that. I always have. I was six years old when I first heard that line spoken in the movie Excalibur, but I felt that way long before I ever heard it. I remember it occurred to me as a very small child that the life of a person basically is what he or she knows. Everything we do, everything we feel, everything we think is directly caused by what we know. Add up what we do, feel, and think, and you get who we are. Life, in essence, is knowledge. Therefore if you deliberately cause someone to "know" something that isn't true, you have in a very real sense robbed them of life.

Also, in a way, things that are not known to us do not exist. Inside each of us is a universe, and everything we know forms the content of the universe to us. Telling a lie to someone causes his or her universe not to include whatever the truth of the subject happens to be. Therefore you have for that person destroyed whatever that something is. You have murdered it.

Pretty deep thinking for a todler, huh? Well, that's the way I saw it then, and that's the way I still see it at 30. To me, lying is the worst possible thing a person can do.

Decency?

Such a bland word.

Decency in the vein of -- goodness, rightness, virtuousness, uprightness. (Yes I looked at a thesaurus)

The kind where an old man is crossing the road with a rolling walker and he drops his bag of groceries in the middle of the street and a few apples roll out. You run and help him 'cause you know he's going to stop and try and pick them all up and the cars waiting for him are going to honk the hell out of the guy. (True story)

For a flying roc your values are nicely down to earth.

Lust. Oh wait that's a sin right? Bummer. Lust is definitely my favorite though!

Empathy, the antithesis to all-about-meism.

From websters:
The action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.

Wow.
Great post. Word for word what I woud have said. (other than the movie reference)

Love for God, followed closely by love for man.

I don't believe you

Kendra - the word on its own is meaningless, which it is why it has always been used by dictators. Freedom to do what? Freedom to steal? Freedom to kill people you don't like? Freedom to rape?

'Freedom' is a word I have come to hate, because it almost always actually means its opposite.

What Coco said. "Compassion" would be #1, with "Happiness" and "Enlightenment/Awareness" fighting for #2

integrity

yes, great thread

didn't have to read much to know what it was talking about, anyway.

:Love

tolerance.

Love and Truth.