Today’s quote is Mother Theresa’s “God does not call us to do great things, but to do small things with great love.”

The other day I was talking with Will, and we were talking about each others values and how different ours were from the other’s and prodding around about how we got that way, and it brought to surface some interesting insights.

I was trying to figure out why friendship is such an important value to me, while for other people it is family or self-advancement or something else that is more important. I figured that my parents and family were good role models for teaching me how to maintain and value friendships.

I’d never really thought about it until during said conversation, Will asked me who my parents hung out with as a lead-in to something else, and I said, “Well, their friends…” and was puzzled because I didn’t know what else the answer could have been. My parents have always had close friends in their lives.

Nancy and Greg were the first and most prominent examples I had growing up. “Next door” was as commonplace as another room in our house, and watching how my parents maintained their relationship with the Fowlers must have been my earliest lesson in how important, and yet how ordinary and expected friendship was. This is also likely why Nancy’s death affected me and continues to affect me so much.

As I grew up and acquired new friends, so did my parents’, and to this day my mom and dad seem to have a more active social life than I do, but oh well 🙂

It wasn’t just my parents, but my grandparents as well, as I can remember their friends being around on a normal basis. I have noted several occasions my surprise when I found out that this person or that was not actually related to me, but just a family friend, simply because they were always around I had assumed the former.

It is strange to figure out how these role models were the source of my values, when looking back on it it seems rather obvious.

So what about YOU, internet. What are your values and where did they come from?