Sunday 13 January 2013

Morals and values

I am thinking about the shape my life has taken and the way I stand firm to my values, my needs, my desires. All my adult life I have struggled to hold firm to a set of moral codes, values in which life makes sense to me. The older I get, the more I realize that my values are only mine...they aren't more "right" or "better" or "make more sense" than the values of others. They are just mine and they have been borne of necessity because mind needed to create some set of rules that could never be broken.

These values of mine work very well some times and other times they appear rigid and incapable of any growth or flexibility. I believe that when certain traumas happened to me as a child, I realized that there was nobody who was going to really look after me in the way that I felt I deserved or wanted. There didn't seem to be any rule of family or life that couldn't be broken to meet someone else's wants or needs. This has shaped who I am and how ferocious I am about protecting a particular way of life.

My husband and I have fought for years and years about how I see everything in such black and white terms, a certain action or decision is finitely right or wrong. He likes the shades of grey in it all, I think its that way because it gives him permission to follow his wants. I, on the other hand, believe in some higher moral code that imposes suffering, and denies desire and want. I sound religious yet I am not. I can't let go, I am so afraid to go to / live in the grey areas of human existence.

I am frustrated, impatient, always driven to fortify those walls and values. It doesn't work yet the thrust to strive for it is as automatic as my heart beat.

morals  plural of mor·al (Noun)

Noun
  1. A lesson, esp. one concerning what is right or prudent, that can be derived from a story, a piece of information, or an experience.
  2. A person's standards of behavior or beliefs concerning what is and is not acceptable for them to do.

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