Aloha Friend:
My name is Jim Hochberg and as the current president of Hawaii Family Advocates (HFA), I want to use this communication resource to reach out to you and share my thoughts on what it is that HFA is here in Hawaii to do for you. Periodically, HFA will send you an email from me that further describes my thoughts to help you see your role as an HFA supporter. I asked myself a series of questions and will use those questions to address what HFA intends to do and why HFA developed that plan of action.
To explain the foundation upon which HFA plans to build in the coming election year, I will start at the beginning of my thought process for this series. The first question, and the subject of this first email is “What do we value?” I want to explore that question because once we actually think about that and put those ideas at the forefront of our thinking, we can explore what it is in our life in Hawaii that impacts, negatively or positively, the things we value, and what, if anything, we might be able to do to support the positive and make the negative more positive so we can strengthen the things we value in the face of living in Hawaii.
What do we value? What do we mean when we ask that question? Defining “value” is a good place to start. I looked here. The use of the word value that I am referring to is defined as: to consider or rate highly: prize, esteem; to rate or scale in usefulness, importance, or general worth.
That helpful Merriam-Webster webpage also provided these synonyms and examples for value: appreciate, prize, treasure, cherish, to hold in high estimation. Appreciate often connotes sufficient understanding to enjoy or admire a thing’s excellence; it implies rating a thing highly for its intrinsic worth; implies taking a deep pride in something one possesses. Americans prize their freedom. Treasure emphasizes jealously safeguarding something considered precious like a treasured memento; cherish implies a special love and care for something like cherishing children above all.
Do we value many things? Yes. Some more than others? Yes. But I believe we would all probably list these as things we value: our family, our faith, our ability to provide what it takes to live in Hawaii, our hobbies, the things we enjoy, and the freedom to continue to value, to prize, to cherish and to treasure those things.
The point of today’s installment is to ask the question what do you value in particular; and to ask you to begin to think about those things in a purposeful way so you start to consider what kind of sure foundation upholds your expectation to continue to be able to value these things. Are you lucky that at this time in history you are able to enjoy valuing these particular things, or is there a structure ungirding your ability to enjoy them?
