How Do We Know Our Priorities Are Right?

Do you have a set of priorities in your personal life? Oh, maybe something like: Family > Work > Play…

Do you set priorities in your mind for what the government needs to do? How about your priorities for what your customers need?

How do you decide you have the right priorities? Is it basically a hit-or-miss, experiential kind of thing? Do you consult with folks you consider experts? Or, maybe, you don’t set any priorities ’cause you think they’re a waste of time…

[ So, let’s see: One of my priorities for this post is to get my readers thinking about priorities. Hm… So far, I have a bunch of questions posed that could, if my readers wanted to comment, be the basis for some kind of survey on priorities. O.K. That’s a first step but I need something more… An example? ]

I have a book out. It expresses in action what I’ve had to learn through lots of study and personal experience. Basically, I’ve created a fictional world where the people solve the problem I’ve struggled with in my life, for most of the years of that life. What comes first? Peace or Justice?

Lots of people say we need, somehow, to have peace before we can ever hope to have justice, whether the arena is the world or the family.

So, in my own experience, before I had the right guidance given to me, I followed the common set of priorities–I tried to establish peace with other people so we could experience justice in our interactions. Since justice was a lesser priority than peace, I often acted in unkind ways to force a peace that could never last. I did things like threaten to take myself out of a relationship unless the other person acted the way I thought they should be acting so we could have peace.

Since threatening others to elicit behavior you what them to exhibit is an unjust method, I, slowly, learned my priorities were out of order. Justice had to come first, then peace might be possible–I had to act in ways that assured I was giving them justice by taking their needs into account.

What I discovered in this sadly lengthy process was that there was a third quality between Justice and Peace–Unity.

If I acted toward others with justice, we were able, more often than not, to reach a state of unity and peace flowed easily from that unified experience.

So, over far too many years, I learned that the formula, Peace > Justice, was wrong.

The right formula was: Justice > Unity > Peace.

Finally, I was ready to write the book…

[ O.K., that was another priority for this post–give an example of experimenting to find the right order for priorities and suggest folks look for any important missing priorities in their personal formula. ]

But, the priorities for this post won’t matter much if I mess with the priorities for this blog – Reading, Writing, and Publishing.

Then, there’s the blogging priority to keep posts short enough to hold the reader’s interest.

[ Slide gracefully into the main point of the post… ]

Setting priorities is important in reading–Focus > Relate > Apply

They’re important in writing–Create > Experiment > Finalize

And, publishing–Study > Apply > Keep Applying

I admit, I know a lot about reading, a bit about writing, and I’m still learning about publishing.

Some of those priorities might be wrong…

Your ideas???
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