Good Old Midwestern Girl

I've been thinking about the values I was taught when I was growing up. It's funny; there are the values you are raised with, then they are put to the test. What you emerge with can become the values that shape the adult version of you.

I would say I was raised with the values of integrity, honesty, practicality, kindness, caring and compassion. My parents and grandparents definitely encouraged me to be friendly, respectful, and have a sense of humor. Laugh at the lighter things in life, they would have said. Keep things in perspective. Enjoy good moments with friends and family. When you get to the dinner table, enjoy your meal, conversation, and don't rush. Leave room for dessert.

When I was at the age when your sense of good and bad is still fairly black and white, my parents divorced. It was a bad age to have divorced parents at. I was not able to seperate the good and the bad from the right and the wrong. But, over time it made me more resilient and more flexible. The black and white of right and wrong now have a lot of gray between them. And I'm perfectly OK with that, now that I am an adult. It took a while to get to that point but I am proud to say I am there.

So now I can choose the values I want to keep and those I want to disregard. I've now been on the East Coast for a while and have become indoctrinated in another lifestyle. The honesty and integrity, yeah, I am keeping those. They have done me well. And I really appreciate the honesty people in my life have had with me, despite difficult situations. Being genuine has been another great quality to have. So, I am going to keep those values but blend them with my East Coast acquired political correctness and savvy, plus a bit of Midwestern tact and respect.

The kindness, caring and compassion, of course we are going to keep those. I am going to bound them into the simple term of love. I love the word love. Someone once told me love is spirit on fire but I disagree. Love is entirely its own word.

But the practicality... what I have discovered as I have gotten older is while there is a place for being practical, that often doesn't get us to the life we want to live. After all, it is our passions that keep us going, right? You are not rolling out of bed to go to work per say, but rather because your work may one day lead to that perfect job you are so passionate about, or enable you to afford that fabulous 3-month vacation in France, right? I actually do love my job, but I am beginning to recognize the power of tapping into my passions. And that's what I want my life made up of, the things I am passionate about like friendship, love, travel, adventure, and making a difference in the communities I am a part of. I now see being practical as simply a tool I need to use at times in order to get to my passions.

So, I am going to live my adventurous life in a joyful way, tapping into my energy, love, grace and intelligence. Those are the values I have landed on!