CHAPTER
1
CORE
HUMAN VALUES AND THE HEALING AND DEVELOPMENT OF SELVES
.
Every human being
can grow through stages to better understandings of who we are and who
we may yet be!
What could we call
“core values”?
What has already
been verified as universally desirable in our living?
The beginnings include
being loved and valued in a kind of sufficient nurturing that gives
rise to trust and security.
We cannot omit nutrition,
since we are made of what we eat!
Starvation can lead
to permanent brain damage.
We cannot omit the
importance of being surrounded by language, as this evokes our latent
ability to speak, read and write.
We can gain by understanding
what happens as we produce and play with the components and patterns
of language.
Do educational institutions
promote examination of the processes of bringing forth language?
We need to include
exposure to a more than one way of thinking, lest we become narrow and
rigid in our repertoire of life’s possibilities.
We can become aware
that in a world of informational overload, we will need to discriminate
between propaganda and valid and verifiable claims.
We can see this
as we wonder how much choice we have about our lives at every level.
To turn to the positive,
we can each come to any moment of any day, and bring to mind three good
things that have happened that day.
We can build our
lives around this looking for the positives.
This is likely to
lead to valuing ourselves.
We can look over
our talents and passions and discover that such gifts are to be nurtured
and supported.
We can think of
meanings and the contexts in which they exist.
We can glimpse enough
of big pictures, to see ourselves as participants in these big pictures.
We can call this
“perspective finding”.
When we do this
we can realize that every person has a place in her or his own corner
of the world.
We can respond to
difference with curiosity rather than with hostility and prejudice.
So you, the reader,
are a person whose life has meaning and importance, and your life from
here on is indeed an expression of this realization.
We can all be healers!
Let’s do it!
medicine