In my first blog under Inheritance, we talked about how you will leave impressions on your caregivers, family and friends. Those impressions turn into perceptions and those people will undoubtedly believe those perceptions to be real until such time as they see them as being different from their original observation.
In my second blog under Inheritance, we talked about how principles serve as a chain of reasoning and help guide us through life. Principles are used to make life changing decisions, and they keep us on a firm path for as long as that principle remains important to us. Principles can change at any time and we’ll continue to develop new principles throughout our lives, much like you were forced to change some of your principles when you were diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis. Many of the principles you set for yourself will be picked up by your children and grandchildren, so they’re part of their inheritance.
In today’s blog, I want to talk about values. Values are beliefs that are the foundation of our lives. They are handed down from generation to generation in our families and will always be there for us. Values help guide us through life.
Let’s say your family has a strong religious belief. Your great-grandparents were strong believers, your grandparents were strong believers, and your parents were strong believers. Chances are you will be a strong believer as well as that’s the value that was used to raise you. You have learned to trust God and go to Him in times of trouble. Nothing will ever fracture your faith in God. You may stray once in a while, but you can always come back to your strong faith and know that God will always be there for you. That value is foundational for you and no matter what path you take in life, you will always have your value (faith) to guide you.
Let’s try another example. Let’s say your family raised you with a strong awareness of “Family”. You remain very close to your mother, father and siblings throughout your life. You spend most holidays together. When one of you is going through a tough time, your family is your support group. There isn’t anything any member of your family wouldn’t do for each other. Your value is Family.
Contrast that to someone who never had a close family, or perhaps no family at all. Maybe they grew up in a broken home or perhaps siblings live far apart and rarely, if ever, get together. Does that mean this person has no values? Of course not. It simply means they will have different values than you. They will have their own values they can rely on. Perhaps that person’s value is working hard and giving maximum effort to everything they do. If that’s the case, that’s how they will live their life.
Values contribute to our success, but that doesn’t mean everyone has to have the same values. It would be a pretty boring world if that were the case. Values can include faith, family, work ethic, sports, music, art, or just about anything someone is really passionate about. That’s not passionate for a moment or a season; that’s passionate for a lifetime. If a person is passionate about sports and makes Sports their value, then they will probably be involved in sports their entire life.
During times of difficulty or stress, we can rely on our values to help us through. Just like the foundation of a building, our values are rock solid and will be there for us even during times of disaster. Take the Family value for example. When disaster strikes, if one of your values is Family, your family will be the first people you turn to for comfort. If Work Ethic is one of your values, when disaster strikes, you might find yourself burying yourself in your work, because that’s your comfort place.
The same holds true for times of abundance. When you receive good news, you share that news with the people that are closest to you, be they family, co-workers or sports buddies.
Values don’t have to fit a certain pattern. They are whatever is extremely important to each of us. Have you ever known someone who loved music and passed that love of music down to their children? That’s a value. While our values can be similar with others, they can just as easily be something so unique that no one else shares them. Our intensities, when it comes to values, also vary from person to person. I’ve know people with Family as their value who can’t make a decision without first seeking full family approval. I’ve known others who don’t have to go to that extreme. The important thing about values is they will always be there for us.
You probably have a few values that you live by and those values will be handed down for generations to come. As your children marry and have children, they will probably be exposed to some new and different values coming from their spouse’s side of the family. They may even adopt some of these new values as their own. That doesn’t mean they’ve discarded your values or that some point in the future, your great-great-grandchildren will have more values than they know how to deal with. It just means they will select which values they choose to live by, but keep the rest in their heart. It’s not uncommon, however, for people to return to some of those moth-balled values at some point in their life. Remember, values are always there.
Years ago, I knew a family that immigrated from Italy. There was a mother, a father, two sisters and a brother. They all learned to speak English, but they spoke Italian at home because they were proud of their heritage. The sisters and brother grew, married and had families of their own. The sisters and brother spoke only English in their homes, so their children were only exposed to Italian when they visited their grandparents and really never learned how to speak the language. When the grandparents passed away, suddenly no one spoke Italian anymore. Even when the original brother and sisters got together, they spoke only English. Eventually, none of the children knew a word of Italian until Sophie (a great-granddaughter) became interested in her Italian heritage. She wanted to learn how to speak Italian and possibly go to Italy as an exchange student in college. They didn’t offer Italian in junior high or high school, so she went to her great aunt for help. Her great aunt brushed up on her Italian and taught Sophie how to speak it. That pride of Italian heritage was a value which skipped a generation or two, but was still there when Sophie needed it.
So now that you know the difference, you can easily see how perceptions, principles and values help guide our lives.
We’ll have thousands of perceptions during our lifetime and we’ll leave thousands of perceptions about ourselves with others. Some will remain and some will disappear almost as quickly as they were formed. Perceptions are adaptable and can be easily changed based upon additional observations. Some will be important and some will be trivial. We will have perceptions, and our actions, appearance and demeanor will cause others to create perceptions about us. As such, we will leave perceptions as an inheritance. That’s why we have to try our hardest to assure those perceptions are the best they can be. When our contact with our loved ones has ended and we pass from this earth, we want others to remember us in the best way possible. The best way to do that is to be the person you want others to see.
The typical person will have hundreds of principles throughout their lives. Most of them will be important, at least at the time. Some of them may come and go as life changes and we mature. We’ll abandon some and develop new ones. Principles help guide our life and how we interact with others. They allow us to grow and develop, but they also help us put up barriers against the chaos that surrounds us. Principles help us focus on what’s important. Many of the principles we use will be picked up by our children and grandchildren. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, so principles are definitely part of our inheritance.
Lastly, we have values. Values will always be there for us. We’ll only have a few values in our life, but they will be extremely important to us. Even if we find ourselves abandoning them at times, they will always be there should we decide to use them. You may go away to college and lose contact with your family, but your family will always be there for you should you need them. You can skip some generations, but your Italian heritage will always be there for you. Values are our foundation. They’ve been handed down through our family for generations. They are our rock. They will help get us through life. Most importantly, you will hand down your values to your children and the same values that guided you through life will be there for them should your children choose to use them. That’s your inheritance to them. Cherish your values. They are the most important gift you will ever receive and the most important gift you will ever leave your family when God calls you home.
Myasthenia Gravis isn’t a perception, a principle, or a value. MG creates uncertainty and chaos in our lives. We need to remember that when we interact with others, especially our loved ones. We don’t want to leave the perception that MG is winning. We don’t want to make MG a principle that is guiding our life. We sure don’t want to make MG a value. Most importantly, we don’t want MG to play any part in the inheritance we leave our loved ones. The only way to do that is by making sure Myasthenia Gravis remains a bump in the road and not a barrier. It may limit what we can do physically, but it can’t control what we think, or how much we love, or how much love we leave our family in an inheritance.