What it is
Not everyone can immediately answer what life values are. To define it, I would choose synonymous words such as vital significance, importance, principles, civic position. In simple terms, this is what is valuable in life.
You might decide that these are cars, cottages, large bank accounts and country trips. This is true, but much more important is the health of loved ones, the laughter of a long-awaited child, the first published book or someone’s life saved. Love, dreams are very important for everyone, and life itself is absolutely priceless.
This suggests that there are many values in life, and they are different. If you can touch a car, you can see your created film, but a dream cannot even be felt until it comes true. That is why it is so difficult to define what life values are.
Important! It will be much easier to understand your priorities, and therefore yourself, if you know what is truly important and what priorities are.
With examples from literature
Material and spiritual values – what is more important for a person? This question has always worried people. In addition, the problem becomes urgent: can material values supplant spiritual ones? Everyone has their own answer to this question.
Nowadays, people strive for greater comfort, they want to live without bothering themselves. However, such a life requires investments that few can afford. Then the race for funds begins. People work extra, master several professions, take on part-time jobs - in a word, they try to have more money. For what? Buy luxurious, expensive goods, relax abroad in the summer, buy and furnish an apartment or house with expensive equipment.
All these achievements are growing like a snowball. They don't end. What happens to a person who has many material values? He is separated from his family, does not see his children, spouse, parents, and misses the most important moments of his life. He hardly rests, often works extremely hard, and receives almost no treatment. The consequence of this is his emptiness. The time comes when a person has everything, but he is lonely and no one needs him. He has no friends, relatives, loved ones. This is how material values influence a person’s life. If they crowd out the spiritual in people, then people will disappear. They will become soulless and insensitive. This means that a person needs all objects, means, position in society in order to live, to use them for life. When they become the only meaning of life, the desire to live disappears. What are spiritual values? This is an opportunity to have loved ones, relatives, friends. Live next to them in harmony and understanding. Help each other, rejoice in successes and support in difficult times. Do not judge, do not blame, do not use others, and do not become an object of ridicule and enslavement yourself. After all, by choosing material values, we can lose spiritual ones. Like, for example, the hero of N.M. Karamzin’s story “Poor Liza” Erast. He chose wealth, for the sake of it he married an unloved woman, that is, he committed deception. For the sake of material wealth, he also destroyed Lisa. He repented, but he could not return everything as it was.
Consequently, it can be argued that material values can defeat spiritual ones, but then the person also perishes. It's unlikely that people will want to put up with this. Moreover, while maintaining spirituality, one can live in material prosperity. By choosing a moral path in life, without giving up material rewards, a person can get the golden mean that he strives for.
What is included in this concept
The most important things in life are a person’s spiritual values, vocation, material wealth, brightness and fullness of life, family and friendships, health and life itself. I divided my life priorities like this:
The life and health of my family, loved ones and mine.
This includes:
- life,
- well-being,
- the safety of family and friends and mine,
- nutrition,
- appearance.
Spiritual values of a person:
- moral,
- religion,
- political beliefs,
- culture.
Family relationships and relationships with friends and others:
- Love,
- friendship,
Vocation:
- Job,
- career,
- hobby,
- talent, abilities,
Material condition:
- financial well-being,
- house,
- car,
- garage,
- other types of welfare,
Saturation of life:
- trips and travels,
- sport,
- complete rest.
This is the order in which I put my life values.
This is interesting! Examples of courage in literature and life: essay Courage and Cowardice
Are views changing?
A person’s philosophy of life changes with age, which means there is a reassessment of the importance of many aspects. This revaluation and formation of values is influenced by :
- family,
- Friends,
- classmates, work colleagues,
- life experience,
- state in the surrounding world,
- his own condition,
- any specific situations.
In childhood, few people think about their health and, of course, will not put their health and the health of their loved ones at the very top level of priorities.
But already at this time, a person’s morality, his moral principles are formed, his abilities and talents are revealed, the desire to play sports is manifested, and relationships with peers are built. That is, from a very early age it is necessary to form a personality and a scale of significance for the child.
Can material values supplant spiritual ones?
Spiritual values are the inner world of a person, the principles that guide him in life, the moral guidelines that he follows. Material values are directly opposite to spiritual ones; these include those benefits that form a person’s social status. And he decides on his own to follow one or the other. There are, of course, cases when material values crowd out spiritual ones. But I still want to believe that there are much more people who ennoble their inner world, that parents, when raising their children, invest in them the highest values that are not measured in monetary terms.
Domestic writers often wondered whether material values could supplant spiritual ones, and came to different answers. Let's look at specific works. Let's take, for example, Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin's comedy "The Minor." Describing the main character, Mrs. Prostakova, the author offers us a portrait of an uneducated and cruel woman, for whom material well-being comes first in this life. She does not care at all about the feelings of other people and is ready to unite two young people who are indifferent to each other, just to get Sophia’s inheritance. This behavior of the heroine is not accidental - she adopted it from her parents, inveterate representatives of the old nobility. She will no longer be able to change herself. And he has no desire to do this. Analyzing this work, we see an example of how material values are placed above spiritual ones.
But the second example is the opposite of the first. We find it in Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace”. Nikolai Rostov is an honest and well-mannered young man. After the death of his father, Count Rostov, he becomes the head of the family and the solution to many problems, in particular material ones, falls on his shoulders, because the old man has incurred a lot of debts. Nikolai could have refused the inheritance, thereby getting rid of debts, but did not do so. There was another decision - to marry a rich heiress. But it didn’t suit the young man either. In love with Princess Marya, the man moves away from her, considering himself unworthy of the girl, because he cannot offer her anything, since he is simply in poverty. And yet feelings will prevail over reason. The lovers are united in marriage. But Nikolai remains true to his principles. Wealth did not have a decisive meaning for him; he loved Marya Bolkonskaya. The selected example, in contrast to the first, shows us a hero who lives by different laws, a morally rich hero who puts spiritual values above material wealth.
Concluding the essay, I would like to emphasize once again that life often offers us different situations, the main thing is to get out of them with dignity, no matter what, remain a person who cares about his spiritual world, and not about increasing material wealth. I would like to believe that there are more such people in the world and that it is on them that this world rests, and through their efforts it develops. I sincerely hope so.
See also:
Why is conflict between fathers and children inevitable?
Is it important to maintain connections between generations?
What does the modern generation read?
Why are young people reluctant to listen to the advice of their elders?
Are values that important?
The meaning of the word “values” is clear to everyone. At first glance, the question of how important what is valuable does not sound very smart. But in life it happens that the real significance of the main essence is replaced or lost altogether.
I remember an example from my student youth: we often donated blood, but we didn’t think at all that it would save someone’s life; it was important for us to get two days off. So lofty ideas were replaced by insignificant pleasures.
But it's not that scary. It’s much worse when people drink alcohol and take drugs and kill their own lives for the sake of imaginary pleasure. Here, not only life and health are lost, but everything that makes a person a person is completely devalued - spirituality, morality, mental abilities, relationships with loved ones and friends.
When they say that a person has no values in life, they mean a completely lost individual.
Example of an essay on the topic of life values
Basic human life values
Final essay: What are the spiritual values of the youth of our time?
(397 words) The youth of our time have the same spiritual values as their ancestors, because the wealth of the inner world has always been the category most resistant to change. We also strive for personal growth, self-development, and finding harmony with the world and ourselves. We also value love, friendship, family. To be convinced of this, it is enough to analyze modern books about the younger generation.
Consider John Green's popular book The Fault in Our Stars. Hazel Lancaster was sick with cancer and was depressed, because a serious illness poisoned her life with endless and almost hopeless treatment. But her serious condition brought her closer to other people who were going through the same thing. The boys and girls of the cheerleading group were having serious conversations about what they considered the highest value of their fading lives. Thus, Isaac, who also had cancer and lost his girlfriend, valued love most of all: “People lose their eyes, get sick with the devil, but everyone should have true love, which lasts at least until the end of their lives!” - he said. Augustus had a fear of oblivion and wanted to leave his mark on the development of civilization so that his contributions would be remembered. Therefore, he even wrote a sequel to the novel, which his girlfriend really liked. Hazel valued family very much and even made her parents promise that they would not divorce after her death. All these young people gave preference to eternal spiritual values: love, family, vocation.
Let's consider a similar example. In Nancy Jones's book "Molly" we see two destinies intertwined by friendship. Two girls communicate and become very close friends, but fate still separates them. It is interesting to trace what spiritual values each of them preferred. Betsy put all her energy into self-development. She received a prestigious education and a promising job. Having learned about the tragic fate of her childhood friend, who survived sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather, Betsy showed kindness and consciousness: she decided to open a help center for teenagers who suffered from harassment, but could not open up to anyone. The heroine valued her calling and love for people above all else, because she unselfishly made a great contribution to the development of society. But her friend Molly, after all the disappointments and traumas she had suffered, felt the need for a quiet haven and chose family values: she married for love and gave birth to a child. In this example, the young heroines also strived for the eternal spiritual joys that love, life’s work and family give us.
Thus, people from century to century give preference to the same spiritual values, because they do not change over time. Self-realization in love, vocation, friendship, family will always attract boys and girls, because it gives life deep meaning and promises happiness.
