Thougths 35: Values enrich our lives

Frequently, you face situations – at home as well as at work – which require your taking positions based on your values. These positions may invariably put you in a battle-field – and when you are in a battlefield, you must be prepared to fight. You should not run away from righteous battles in life – like Arjuna (of Maha Bharata Fame). Krishna did not allow him to run away. Krishna taught him Bhagavad Gita at that time – which restored Arjuna’s courage and his Kshatriya values.

Values are your allies at such times. When you are alone in a fight – against injustice, adversity, poverty, etc, victory will always be on your side ultimately - although it may seem that your adversary may seem to have the upper hand in the beginning. No matter what the outcome for your adversary in the battle, there is no defeat for you - only victory. This is the moral of every story in every language in history. Moral authority is the highest - and it must always win ultimately.

If you have values, you are strong – and no hardship is too hard for you. A person with values is relatively free from fear. He has the satisfaction that he lived a noble life. You feel good when values guide your life. Values give you a strong foundation for the future growth. If you lack them, it is like building structures on sand.

Values are very powerful weapons to fight life's battles. Mahatma Gandhi and Martin King Jr are examples of that kind of warriors. Gandhi single handedly made the entire Indian subcontinent rally round his value based freedom fight and made the mighty British Monarch to sit up and take note. He had no weapons other than faith in truth and non-violence. The epic battle of Mahabharat (The Hindu Epic) is a fight between those who stood by what is morally right and those who stood for the opposite. Most of the ancient teachers in India - the great Gurus, who were absolutely poor materially, were very rich persons morally and of course, highly respected.

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Thought 34: Learning values

Values should be learnt early. Otherwise, it would be too late. Once the living habits and living styles get set, it is very difficult to change them. There are four places where a child can learn values - from parents at home, from the teachers in the school, from the priests (or Gurus) in a temple or a church or a Gurukulam and through the media. Parents have the primary responsibility to implant values in the child.

We are not born merely to have a good time. There is something more - much more - to life. A man with moral values lives a noble life. A Gandhi lives with the courage of his convictions. When Martin Luther King was assassinated, the departed soul goes with a satisfied smile on its lips. The ones that remain behind wail and this agony shows on their souls.

Values are important, not only for the individuals and families, but they are equally important for business corporations too. It is now realized that the business corporations, which set values for their organizations and defended them jealously, prospered in the long run. Those that did not have values or those that compromised on them, slipped down in the ranking in the fortune 500 listing. Some of them have even disappeared altogether from the listing, eventually. The book "In search of Excellence" gives several examples.

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Thought 33: Teaching Values to children

Don't you feel outraged at rape, street violence, drugs, terrorism, etc? Can they take place on the scale they do now, if the society feels really infuriated and declares and executes a policy of zero tolerance for such crimes. What about the white-collar crimes (the Enrons, the Satyams, and similar large scale white collar scams), which leave several hard working middle class people and also the old and helpless people, destitute? Who can say that truthfulness, kindliness, tolerance for the under-privileged, loyalty, hard work, fairness, equity and justice, excellence, cleanliness, helpfulness are bad? Then, why are we not teaching them to our children? If the child does not learn them, how can it ever inculcate them? If children do not imbibe these values, who is responsible for it?

Frequently, we may be called upon to choose between “being happy” and “being right”. These are very common situations in our work environment and relationships. Where values are involved, you should always choose “being right”. Everything else is negotiable. Values are not.

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Thought 32: Values are important for every person

Amongst all god’s creatures, the human being alone can exercise choice, because he alone has the gift of intellect (called Buddhi in Sanskrit), which enables him to think and to choose, whatever appears to him the right thing to do, under a given set of circumstances.

For instance, every one faces happy circumstances as well as unhappy circumstances in his/her life; you always oscillate between happiness and unhappiness. When happy circumstances visit you, people flock to you even when they are not invited to do so. When unhappy circumstances visit you, however, people abandon you. You are left alone mercilessly. It is at those times, your values stand by you; they give you character and courage to face unpleasant situations and unpleasant people, calmly and bravely.

Very few young people have values nowadays. Even amongst those who have values, very few of them defend their values zealously. You must be amongst the brave few – and cultivate some values and defend them even it involves some loss or disadvantage to you when you do so.

In my school days in India (in the thirties and forties), we used to have what is called a “Moral Instruction” period - once a week in the school. This is now conspicuously absent in the present day school curriculum. Therefore, it becomes very essential for the parents to try to inculcate some values in their children - when they are still young.

Telling truth is a moral value. Respecting elders and teachers is a cultural value. Sympathizing with those who are not so fortunate and with those having physical or mental handicaps is an ethical value.

A few examples of more values are given below.
• Keep your promises but do not feel disappointed, if others do not.
• Keep secrets, but do not expect others to keep them.
• Make new friends, but cherish old and tried friends.
• If you borrow something, do not forget to return it – in a better condition, if possible.

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Thought 31: Understanding Values

What are values? My friend Ranga once gave me an interesting explanation for values. He said, "Suppose you want to make a color photograph of your father to put in a nice frame in your living room. It may cost you, say, $ 10/- But what is its value for you? You cannot put a dollar value on it". Some people understand “the price of everything and the value of nothing”. Values do enrich your life - but not in terms of dollars. You must not think of values in terms of profit and loss.

There is a much more deep-seated meaning to a value. It is what you call ethics. Values give meaning to life; they build conviction and courage in a person; they develop character in a person. There is a morality in values, which is very important for righteous living. There are certain things that you are simply not prepared to do or tolerate when others do, no matter what sacrifice this belief may demand from you. It makes you feel good when you place these values above your self interest.

Here is an interesting story (written by Balu Mahedran of Tamil Cine fame) narrated to me recently by Mr Gopalakrishnan, Hon Director, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Hyderabad. One lady teacher in a school found a boy student teasing a girl student in a highly reprehensible manner - which was very difficult for any self-respecting teacher to witness and tolerate. She immediately confronted the boy student and threatened him with dire consequences if he does not stop this kind of bad behaviour immediately. That boy happened to be the son of a well known rowdy, who is also politically very influential. The boy immediately threatened back the teacher saying that his father will not only physically attack her but he will also smash up the school. The teacher immediately reported the matter to the Head Master of the school. The head Master got frightened and started rebuking and reprimanding the teacher - saying that she should have had more sense than getting all of them into this dangerous situation. He told the teacher to immediately go and apologise to the boy student and ask him not to tell his father. The teacher refused. All other teachers in the school also felt that this teacher should not have put the school and its teachers into this problematic and untenable situation. They felt that she should not be stubborn and cause more damage to the school and its teachers. But still the teacher refused to bend – as she felt that she did the right thing.

As expected, the next morning the Father rowdy, accompanied by his rowdy followers and son, descended on the school in a menacing manner and started rebuking the Head Master in a very foul language. He wanted to physically assault the lady teacher who rebuked his son. The teacher was summoned and she immediately told the rowdy father that he should at least listen to her side of the story before he does what he came there to do. Then she told him exactly what happened. The Father rowdy then said to his son, “You told me that you did nothing but the teacher unnecessarily rebuked you. Is this true?” The son did not say anything except to remain with his head bowed down.Then, they called the girl student who was abused by his son and she confirmed what the teacher said. Immediately, the rowdy father started beating his son and fell at the feet of the teacher and said, “Madam, you did the right thing. My father never punished me when I misbehaved like this when young - and look at me now. I am a despicable rowdy. I put this son of mine in this nice school so that he will learn some discipline, character and will not become a useless rowdy like me. Madam, please do not spare him any more if he misbehaves in future. And lastly, please accept my apologies for the intolerable misbehaviour of my son”.

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Thought 30: We all make silly mistakes

Most of the time, people are bewildered. They deal with life in a state of daze. When you are bewildered, you tend to make the most silly mistakes, even if you know the right way to do a thing. Further, if you are lazy, you do not also bother to correct these mistakes. Don't you remember having done silly mistakes in the maths paper in your student days? You should have scored many more marks than you did but for these silly mistakes. The habit persists in later life too. The casual approach to problems, the lack of attention to detail, continue to hound you, when the earlier habits are allowed to dig in and get well entrenched.

If you commit a mistake now, the consequences will occur some time in future. By not correcting this habit of acting first and then thinking later, you are not only making your present unhappy, but you are committing your future also to unhappiness irrevocably. Worrying, when future becomes present, is not going to remove the problem. By worrying you are not solving any problem - you will only be adding to it. Thus, while the analytical part of the mind is always kept snoozing, the rest of it is always kept in a state of worry. As your worry increases, your capacity to think clearly and act decisively also diminishes correspondingly.

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Thought 29: Pointing out mistakes

Some people are in the habit of criticizing others - even for trifling mistakes. Criticizing with a view to finding fault is not good; it hurts the self-esteem of the other person. When a person is hurt, he never learns; he gets into the defensive mode.

Pointing out mistakes with the intention of making the person improve is OK, provided of course, the other person perceives it as such – in a positive manner. However, if he views it negatively, it would only result in eroding his self-esteem.

Most people who are in the habit of criticizing even for small errors, never think of complimenting a person, even for jobs well done. If you do not compliment excellence, you should not comment on shoddiness also.

Instead of making a young person feel bad about his mistakes, make him learn from his mistakes. It is for this reason, a good corporate strategy is to encourage their young and inexperienced employees to take decisions. Since making mistakes and learning from them is important the top managements may want to catch the employees at it when they are quite young and relatively inexperienced. One reason for this is that mistakes made as a junior employee in the hierarchy will not be as costly as those made by the seniors. Michael Jordan of the Basket ball fame says that “I have failed many times and that is why I am a success”.

Never let go an opportunity to complement people for their accomplishments, however, trifling they are. There is nothing like a pat on the back to raise one’s self esteem.

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Thought 28: Not learning from a mistake is a crime

Committing a mistake is not a crime - but not learning from one is a crime. They say that years make age but mistakes make experience. If you put on a lot of weight due to over eating and this is causing several other problems, continuing the habit of over eating is not learning from a mistake. Forgetting to renew the car insurance once can be tolerated as a mistake. But to continue to do so, year after year, is not learning from a mistake. Not checking your blood cholesterol for a long time, but finding in the later check that it is quite high, is perhaps somewhat excusable. But not doing these checks later, periodically, is not excusable. The body will not excuse you.

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