New Starts Old Values

I was talking to a friend from college about great transitions in life. Given we are the same age and live a very short distance apart, a conversation like this is easy to have, and I am delighted we have the chance to talk about our lives from time to time. Anyway, since I met him on our first day on campus some forty-four years ago next month, it is sort of amazing we are still connected. He qualifies as my oldest friend, though I am 3 months older. He is forever associated in my mind with the greatest change I ever made in my life. Marriage, which came about 6 years later, was not a change I made alone. The change then was a joint venture made with my wife, and not by me alone

I asked my friend if he was a different person in college than he had been until then, and he said, 'Oh yes, very much so." I told him I had become an entirely different person that year, and I always recall it that way. Sure, we all do the things our parents wouldn't dream of letting us do, but not everyone changes completely. I asked him what he had kept the same during that transition and he said simply his values, like hard work, for example. I meant to ask for more examples, but the conversation headed another way and I never got the chance. I have been thinking since about my own answers to that question, and here is a list from my own perspective—hard work, friendship, determination, courage, kindness and empathy. I think I hung onto those values in how I lived my life during that period. Is it important that integrity, honesty, generosity or love didn't occur to me when I just now compiled that list? I don't think so. What matters is that I held onto some values, and made it through.

I don't add the qualifier 'positive' in front of the word values, but who has negative values anyway? Is dishonesty a value? I don't think so. It's the absence of the value of honesty. We chatted some more about career-related transitions, and I observed that my experience in college gave me the courage and an optimistic view of most all of the changes that followed. My career moves were mostly voluntary—I chose them because I thought I and my family would be better off—but there was also an element of challenge, of proving myself in each.

Now, I'm making another giant transition (at least it looks that way from this side of the gap). It's as new a chapter in my life as any other, including that transition when I was eighteen. I am stopping to take a breath, and asking what values I need to pack for the trip. I also wonder how many challenges I can stand to weather and where the element of proving myself will arise. I know they are out there, because I wouldn't be making the transition if there weren't something to prove.