I guess this should say values, instead of virtues. Virtues in the James international version are “things that are highly regarded by your society/community/country”

Values are things that you regard highly on a personal level. That’s what I’m going to mention here.

I tell myself I value reading. I really do. I enjoy reading and I love that most books I read are filled with nuggets of wisdom from men and women smarter than me and I get a chance to hear their wisdom. Some of the time, it’s overwhelming because I will pick up a 1,000 page book and feel like it will never end. Other times I get so excited I’ll have 3 books that I’ve started and I feel like I can’t make any progress.

When things like that happen, I feel overwhelmed and I’ll either stop reading or I’ll just start a new book leaving 3 unfinished books in my wake.

Purpose of writing it down

I’m a news junkie. I love reading snippets of news articles. One reason is to stay informed. I think that’s an important virtue in our world. Another reason, I’m not proud of, is to either confirm my suspicions that I was right and make myself feel like I’m always right.

Esspecially on opinion news sites. When someone opines my opinion that I have, I feel validated and want to do that more and more. I’m not proud of that, but it’s pretty accurate.

The reason why I bring that up, is I tell myself that I value reading timeless books more than timely news. Timely news serves a purpose, albeit a small purpose. If you’re anything like the layman, you love feeling validated and watching polarizing news networks helps you feel validated every day.

Write down your actions

So if you’re writing down the values that you hold most dear to you, you should take it one step further. Write down what you do. There’s a saying that goes something like this: “Show me your bank statment and I’ll show you what you value.”

There isn’t a bank statement for your time, but you can write it down. You can look at usage data on your phone to see how much time you’re spending on your phone. That’s a big struggle for me. I tell myself I don’t value a phone, but I spend more time on that than on reading. Some of that is work related, but there is a good bit of escapism going on too.

Do your actions match your values?

Writing down what you value and writing down what you do will be alarming. Do you value helping people? How much time do you spend helping people? Do you value reading the Bible every day? How much time do you dedicate that that every day? There are about 60 hours a week when you’re not working or sleeping. How are your values filling those times?

We have a tendency to fill the void with the easiest tasks. I’m guilty of it almost daily. It’s easier to scoll through my phone and look at news headlines that don’t impact my day to day life at all than to read the Autobiography of Ben Franklin. (That’s one of my 3 books I’m currently working through).

There’s also this ‘blog’ that I’m not actively publishing. It’s acting more as a place to voice thoughts I have when I’m bored. Is this something I value more than writing or running? Not really. But here I am writing this.