Centering our Life

The center of our life should redirect us to appreciate our self and others, because that drives us to love who we are, who we care about and what we do. If we find our self alienated in a relationship or in any situation, the center doesn't hold balance to keep us in desirable motion. We need to find our self back and check our footing based on our personal life's center.
 

Naturally, our bodies operate through the command of the central nervous system. Every cell in our body has a center called nuclei, and every element of matter consists of central atoms. Physically, everything on the ground is pulled by a central force called gravity. The earth and all other planets in the solar system revolve around the sun due to the force coming from the center of that star. Galaxies have centers that hold everything together in the vastness of space where they hang. Socially, there are centers in which human activities flourish.

There are material evidences to the abstract concept of center applied to life, as I have described. That center seems to provide meaning, direction and substance to our thoughts, beliefs, words, feelings and actions.  Consider, kilometer zero. In geographical terms, it is a point of origin from which the distance and location of another point is measured. It's valued as zero. Thus, it is nothing numerically, yet it is so valuable in knowing where we are and finding where we want to go. The seemingly unnoticed center is conduit to who we really are.

Our centers, in a push and pull function, are vital to our life’s motions. Our psyche can be best understood through this center. Our identity also operates from the power of this center. The center is at the core and its power is transferred and projected as an energy that is perceivable and which could affect us and others we socially deal with. But what could this power in our psyche’s core be?

Values: our standards that guide our life, the worth we place on objects and subjects within and around us, and the virtue we hope to share with others we have to live with. These motivate us to define our life course, to behave in ways we do, to make important decisions, to choose words that we utter, to be mindful of others, and to be cognizant and responsible with our thoughts and actions. They are abstract concepts that only matter when we consider them to have worth.

Our aspirations, our dreams and our ambitions are mere projections of what we value in life. Our goals are but expressions of what lies in our psyche’s core. Our attitude towards others and towards situations in our life is also determined by our values. Our judgment of what we can perceive also find grounds on our held values. While our responses to life problems could be situational, our values act as gatekeepers in our decisions. Strongly held values become instinctive, while loosely held values don’t gain influence in human actions.

There are those who think dichotomously that values could be negative or positive, but it is a spectrum. There is a neutral value, neither nor. The degree varies. The mathematical representations of positive and negative values in the Cartesian plane have absolute representations in the calculations.

What is valuable in life ought to be positive. With that, life’s motion is in a constant positive spectrum. This is if we are after a good life. Values must be shared, if not we will be finding ourselves in difficult situations, going after different directions, and getting lost somewhere.  

When we value our self positively, we are able to love our self. When we value others equally as we do to our self, we are able to love them as we would with our own life. When we value life and value excellence, we strive to be the best of who we can be and be the best in what we can do. Then, we are esteemed by our actions. When we value collegiality and quality, we work with others productively and proactively to yield gains. Then we appreciate our efforts and so esteem our self. 

Values that we hold must be positive. We ought to value beauty and not vanity. We ought to value friendship over benefits. We ought to value time over idleness. We ought to value people over material things. We ought to value wealth and not money. We ought to value quality and not mere quantity. We ought to value character over uniqueness. We ought to value our voice over words.  We ought to value justice over fairness. We ought to value life, and in that we ought to value what is excellent and virtuous. 

As we keep our values intact, we flourish as an individual and we find our self in harmony with others. But, when we are alienated, we are at lost as we do not know our self. The lost of our self-worth could lead us to love our self less and care less for others, too. As we lose our values, we lose our self, so we must go back and find our center -- that of what we hold dear the most.   

Should we center our life on someone? Not at any person in this world is worth to become the center of our life.  Instead, we should set our eyes on far greater things above, for everything in this world is fleeting in time.