Values, Goals and Systems!

A recent student in the graphic memoir group mentioned their "maladaptive systems", and how they're doing a memoir about them.

And it got me thinking about the hierarchy --which I'm sure I heard somewhere, but I can't remember where-- of values, goals, and systems.

In essence, we try to identify our VALUES. 

And then try to identify some GOALS that led us live those values or maintain those values. 

Or at the very least, keep them in sight and then we create SYSTEMS that help us meet those goals.

If they function, we can see that our values are still there. But of course, it gets really complicated.

For instance, I'm pretty sure one of my personal core values is that people should be allowed to be their best self (or perhaps truestself.)

I think I have felt this for a very long time, and I think my earliest disappointments in life, were simply running up against obstructions to letting me be who I felt I was. And my earliest empathies were the same for others.

I imagine this is true for a lot of artists. 

(And sadly, I have huge worries even thinking that my own daughter might be feeling the same way that we are somehow keeping her from being her best self. :(   .)

Anyway, I do think this value is been my main value and the goal at an early age, was to just make as much cartoon art and other art as possible, because it tended to show better truer smarter versions of myself than I personally regularly did.

And so, the systems were just eat as cheaply as possible, live as cheaply as possible, dedicate as much time to art, and find friends, who believed the same things... And that worked for a while.

I think I founded this school on the same principle that everybody should be allowed to be their best selves through art, or express their best selves or truest selves, etc.

And so, the goals of the school are to welcome as many people as possible and give them the tools, which are sometimes artistic, and sometimes psychological, and sometimes social, to do that.

So that's what we're trying to do. You can keep us accountable on that. 

So the systems, that's where things get specific. And also cumbersome in one's life. In my young life, for instance, they were how cheaply do I eat? Where is my apartment located?

Who are my friends? And how much time do I want them to stand in my room giving me a hard time? haha.  (Hint, Ed Brubaker! Writer of Captain America!)

Okay, we have to sort of identify good systems and of course, as we get older and more entangled with other people's lives, we realize our values aren't even well understood by ourselves.

What does it mean to be our best self or my best self? If I am driving eight hours, one way to help a friend of a friend and then driving eight hours back or to help this friend of a friend. Have I lost those 16 plus hours plus day of prep and come down.

Have I lost those days of art-making? I didn't make that goal but was I serving my values?

If I am helping others in goals not of my making, only partly in tune with my values, am I serving my values or not? Who gets to be their best selves me or them, me or you?

What's going on? 

And, of course, the bigger question, which is obvious, is what if your own systems collide with the other systems in the world, and they will, then they do and suddenly, you've got a huge recipe for what Prince and other sages have called this thing called life.

Haha . 

So anyway, values, goals, and systems...

What are yours? I'd love to know. I'd love to hear. 

I could use some help with my systems. 

So any advice as well?

Let's help each other out!

And all this is true of the school too. (But actually, I think we're doing okay, , but you can let us know.)

Cheers!

Tom

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