According to our values, and most deeply held predilections and beliefs, selections are made, often quite tacitly, which in so many ways shape the events and circumstances of our lives. As life encumbers us with it's raw materials it's raw experiences, it is our personal values which serve to define, redefine, refine and assemble them into suitable and productive lives for ourselves, our families and our communities. Therefore a disordered set of values will tend to bring about discord and a disordered life and where the values are carefully scrutinized and ordered one's life begins to make sense. Does it not therefore make sense to make an effort to think about one's values, to recognize that they exist, and to determine for onesself how they should exist-and to order them according to the highest ascertainable modes of cognition, now I ask you? And what are these modes of cognition? Where can the average Joe find them? In books? In schools? In the teachings of one's parents? Yes the search may appear complicated and it is. For it is the search of a lifetime. But far better that the the search be complicated than that it be non-existent. For not to have searched and researched one's values is not to be without values; but rather to have received by default ones values- values that are not one's own, values that are randomly distributed across wide and nameless cultural fields, and which therefore in the end serve only to dissociate an individual from his rightful path and righteous self.; and to render that individual easy prey to whatever ill wind comes along which will denigrate and disparage the true heart of that individual. It might be added here that to search for one's values is to embark on the all important process of self-discovery. And one may be sure that each and every child of God has within an undiscovered country of great value- and of great values. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Dreamer of Dreams Wheel within a wheel, play within a play, dream within a dream Can it be that herein lies the key to Reef of Solipsism spoken of by Sartre in his work Being and Nothingness? The head of a family must have a dream and must be singleminded in that dream; and yet must at the same time leave room in his family for the equally important dreams of his children and particularly his spouse. Therefore I propose that the art of leadership requires the capacity to dream dreams that encompass the dreams of others, their utility and interrelationships, using them as building blocks of that major all-embracing life enhancing inspiration. Joseph Ferrara MD http://members.tripod.com/~uncljoedoc/values.txt