A Personal Examination on Behaviors of Loyalty, Honesty, Generosity and Laughter

During the exercise, I started with: loyalty, keeping ties with others without betraying their trust; honesty, being true to myself and others; generosity, being able to give freely, whether material or intangible; kindness, sometimes all someone needs is a little compassion; laughter, life becomes difficult and cynical if you’re unable to laugh; friendship, they are family of choice after all; family, they’ll hold you up when you fall; health, a healthy mind and body allow you to take on the world; love, friendly love or romantic love, it doesn’t matter as long as you’re able to make things important enough to love them; imagination, life grows boring quickly without it; challenges, there’s no point if you’re never challenged and everything comes easy; theatricality, it just makes life more fun in general; enjoyment, you must always be able to enjoy yourself in the things you do; discipline, control is vital; and wonder, you must be able to see the little things in life.

By the end of the activity, I was left with loyalty, honesty, generosity, and laughter. I noticed that currently, these four things that I value are something that I actively pay attention to and practice whenever possible. There isn’t much that I could do to change my behavior towards these values as I am perfectly happy where I am now with them.

As for my feelings on the exercise, I was a bit curious throughout the entire thing. I’m given a few strips of colorful pink paper, and all I do is wonder what I’ll be doing with them. Will it be fun, or maybe tedious? I wanted to know. When writing down the values, it came fairly easily. I know what I value, if not in myself, but in others as well. As I separated my values, I still didn’t have much difficulty. The ones I had at the end are the ones that allow me to experience the others. Without the ability to laugh, I cannot enjoy myself and take life as it is thrown at me. Without loyalty, I never would have had friendships and family in the first place. Without honesty, discipline becomes difficult since I must be honest with myself if I want to be in control of myself. Generosity allows me to express feelings of kindness and the ability to see the wonder in people’s eyes. I was satisfied with myself when all I had were these four strips of pink paper. It meant that in the end, no matter what I lost, I’d still be able to get most, if not all, of values back. With them, I never truly lost everything else that I had. I’m happy about that.