PERSONAL ESSAY
When ‘Living Our Values’ Means Making Unconventional Choices in Life
Making peace with not having it all
I gasp as my bare foot makes contact with yet another sharply broken piece of vinyl floor tile in our kitchen. As I inspect the bottom of my foot for damage, my husband unrolls a piece of duct tape and covers the offending area. We survey the floor, more duct tape than vinyl at this point, shrug comically and say in unison, “We’re living our values!”
With our kids on the cusp of adulthood, four of the five members of our household are driving these days. We share two cars, the newest of which is 18 years old. Scheduling the use of these cars means cramming so many brightly colored reminders into our shared Google calendar that it resembles a Sherwin Williams paint strip. Drop off, drop off, pick up, drop off, pick up, pick up. Arrive early and wait so that the car can be used to take two people to appointments that start at the same time. These may sound like complaints. Poor first world American family, having to suffer along with ONLY two cars. On the contrary, our proclamations of “living our values” serve as the opposite for us. When we shout “LIVING OUR VALUES” as we drape a clean blanket over our worn and fraying couch, we are not complaining. We are drawing our own attention back to the fact that our choices are intentional. We could replace our kitchen floor. We could buy a newer car. We could have stayed in our 3300 square foot home instead of downsizing to one half the size. Instead, we pay for tennis classes, music lessons and swim competitions. Our monthly payments are for braces, not SUVs. We work at jobs that allow for the flexibility to spend many of our regular old days together, instead of working long hours all year but spending holidays in the Caribbean. Our kitchen floor remains broken because we have chosen to spend our money elsewhere. My husband and I came from vastly different socioeconomic backgrounds, but both had the privilege to access higher education. We could have chosen careers that allowed us to pay for tennis classes AND new cars, but we both chose fields not known for being particularly well compensated. Hindsight being 20/20, perhaps one of us might have chosen differently after seeing how much it costs to raise teenagers in a post-covid world. And yet, we’re figuring out how to craft a life we love out of the resources at hand.
This requires balance, of course. When the hot water heater goes out, the people in our house find that they value hot showers every bit as much as tennis classes. We should probably replace that kitchen floor before someone needs stitches. “People over things” is a value that sounds good until certain people really want certain things. Spending on experiences trumps home décor purchases, as long as our home is still a welcoming place to all of our children’s favorite people. Also, please do not misunderstand me. I do not believe that everyone on this earth lives in an environment that is primarily the product of their own choices. Choices are in themselves born of privilege of all different flavors. “Living our values” is a celebration of the fact that we are not stuck in the life we are living. We could pack up next year and move in order to accept higher paying jobs with less flexibility. It would be a more frenetic life, but when things get particularly tight we think about it. And then, at least up to this point, we choose the lives we are currently living once again.
It should also be noted that it sometimes feels that making this life work is a little harder than it ought to be for the work we are putting in. Living our values was easier when groceries were less expensive. Two of our children required major surgery on opposite sides of the country this year. Medical bills have subsequently required us to make choices less focused on our values and more on necessity — new roof or new furnace? It does seem as though our laughter has gotten a little more hysterical this year when we write out checks that render the balance in our checking account lower than it ever used to be. Questions creep in. How many side gigs do we add before we need to pack it in and choose a different life? How close to the edge can we live before living our values turns into irresponsibility? Will it matter that we have given our children a loving and stable home life and nurtured powerful sibling friendships if they don’t have a well-padded college fund? Are we living the right values for us?
That’s the thing, isn’t it? Our values are going to be different than those of my brother or our neighbor or the “parenting expert” advertising her skills at an hourly rate on Facebook. Our values are not better. My brother’s children spend 8 weeks of the summer at an expensive sleepaway summer camp, learning horseback riding, sailing and rock climbing. They attend prestigious private schools, not only receiving a top-notch education, but making contacts that will serve them well in their next chapters. Their struggles are not our struggles, but this doesn’t mean that they are not making trade-offs as a family. They are living their values too. There is power in acknowledging the role that our own choices have played in the life we are living. Knowing not only that we could have done things differently, but that we still could do things differently allows us to feel more at peace in moments of uncertainty.
Today, we choose calm over frenzied. Today we choose together over apart. Today we choose to stick another piece of duct tape over that new crack on the kitchen floor. May we all have the chance to make these kinds of choices. May we all have the luxury of living our own values.
