What's so Important?

We base so much of what is important on the immediate context. For example, a phone call from a family member is considered important and takes priority, except when the US scores with only 27 sec left in the Gold medal hockey game.

Getting to work on time is generally important, unless, while closing the garage door my finger gets caught in the little slants and is pinched so flat that it burst blood vessels. Then lying on the kitchen floor with my finger in ice water whining like baby seems to take priority.

Getting to an engagement on time when I am the main speaker is a primary objective, unless I find myself sitting in a traffic back-up on the 401 on a sweltering summer day, and the news has just filtered back that people lost their lives in the accident ahead. Suddenly, sitting in the traffic jam seems extremely trivial.

The difficulty is we actually spend remarkably little time determining what is of primary importance to us. Subsequently, we can live largely reactionary lives, whose direction is set by the feelings of the moment. Those experiences are powerful and often emotionally charged.

Recently, I’ve been trying to lose weight. I’d like to lose weight. I know that it would be healthy for me and that I’d feel better. If someone asked me, I’d even say it was important for me to lose weight. However, little in my behaviour would convince you that losing weight is ‘important’ to me. The immediate taste of that warm, gooey sugar filled butter tart (it was awesome) overrides my stated priority of losing weight – I rationalize I desire it, I worked hard today, I won’t eat supper (who am I kidding) – or I’ll eat less supper (again, who am I kidding). That starts a downward spiral, ‘cause now I’m thinking: I’ve already blown the diet thing today, so what’s a few chips for a late snack while watching a movie going to hurt?’ The end result is an empty bag of potato chips – and that momentary regret of “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing”.

I’m sure I’m not alone in my struggle of what is important. It’s not as easy as one might think to live one’s life with a clear set of ideals of what is important, and then evaluate all subsequent decisions based on that. Now, what becomes even more complex is when a group of people work together in a team. Take all of the above challenges as individuals, and bring them together and consider how tricky it becomes to develop and live by what is important to us as a group. Just saying something is important is not enough. Writing it on a poster or plaque is not much better. What is important to us must be lived out in our behaviour, in our conversations, in our decisions day by day, decision by decision, moment by moment. As a large group (3700 staff and counting) we have determined that there are four things that need to be our priority: Christ Centredness, Inclusion, Servant Leadership and Integrity – these four pillars uphold our Value: We Will Honour God, and Value People in All We Do and with All Our Resources and our Mission Statement: “to serve the person with exceptional needs”. The only way that we can fulfill this important mission is that if each one of us makes these four principles of primary important. Everything we do, or plan to do, needs to strongly reflect what we say we believe. We must hold each other accountable, question, encourage, model, remind and remind again of our four primary principles. We much continually challenge each other of what it means to live by these principles, and how what we have decided advances them.

We don’t seek to do this to be controlling, but focused. We don’t want to be legalistic – but defining and aligning. Otherwise, we individually and collectively can get caught up in the individual moment of now, rather than our communal vision of future. We must never let our values and mission become a brochure or a nice wall hanging – but empower our principles to be the fuel that drives and guides us.

Anyway, I was just thinking.

Neil



Neil