Personal Values, Essay Example

The importance of my own values to me is something I find I am discovering, even as I discover what those values actually are. This is a process I believe is both crucial and inevitable when someone is young. Life experience is limited, so the kinds of experience that create and test values are only beginning to be known. For example, I believe I value behaving in a way that does not cause pain to anyone else. This feels like an essential value, something I will want to hold onto for life, and instilled in me from early childhood. At the same time, the degree to which I will maintain this value is unknown to me, simply because I have never been faced with a challenge in my life that would truly test my conviction. I still feel, however, that the strength of my commitment to this value would carry me through, and I cannot even imagine a circumstance where I would choose to violate it.

Related to this value is another that I believe I have actually employed, and in direct ways. This belief stems, in fact, from my age; that is to say, I value highly holding onto individual ideas about a wide variety of circumstances, even when those around me feel otherwise. I am no stranger to peer pressure, as no student can be. When you are young, school becomes your society, and you badly want to conform and gain further acceptance. This often translates to “going along” with the crowd, and because it is both easy to do so and because the issues at stake seem unimportant. My value, however, holds that there is no unimportant matter, when it comes to deciding whether or not to support a group mentality. For example, in grade school, a fellow student was once being harshly teased by the others in the class because he had unusual behavior. These others did not harm him; mostly, they made the boy an object of fun behind his back. Joining in with the others in enjoying a little fun at the boy’s expense, however, was not even tempting for me. Very simply, it just felt wrong, and I think this was a value within me asserting itself. My hope is that, as new challenges come my way, I will always take the time to reflect in a way that allows my values to be known. It seems to me that, when this occurs, what appears to be a dilemma is really not much of an issue at all.