What's Important To Me

So as I sit here, procrastinating from other homework as always, I pause and think about a couple things:
     1) Passover - and how much I'm going to miss bread
     2) The two midterms this week I'm currently not studying for
     3) And how difficult this "easy" assignment can be


Most people will say they know their values, they will say they know what's important to them and what makes them a good person. But then you ask them, myself included, to describe those values, to put their opinions into words, and only a few people will be able to do it.  Most of the time I can find words for everything - some people will say for lots of things I have too many words. Ha! But in this case, the words come up short.  But here it goes.

• Friendship:  At some point in the past couple of years I realized how important it is to have a few people who you are especially close with.  As cliche as it sounds, it's the quality not the quantity.  I'd rather have a few friends who I have faith in completely than lots of friends who I'm just eh with. The thing is though, all relationships help define a person - Good ones and bad ones help define an individual, the interactions you have. 

• Faith: If you didn't catch on from the passover reference, the fact that I'm in AEPi, or by other random instances of me mentioning it (which happens rather often), I'm Jewish - and it's something that has defined me since probably Sophomore year of high school.  Before that things were kind of different.  I knew I was jewish but I considered myself agnostic.  But sophomore year of high school I met a couple people who I'm now proud to call some of my best friends who introduced me to a Jewish Youth Group that slowly enveloped my life in the greatest way possible.  My Judaism continued to grow, helping define my values and shape my beliefs.  It's something that has helped me become the kind of person I am now. 

• Service: Everyone talks about the importance of community service and I agree it is important, something that everyone should work on in my opinion.  But how people do their service is more of a defining factor.  I believe that the service starts here. How can we, as one of the most powerful countries in the world, try and better the world if we can't even better ourselves?  I believe that we should all go out there and help repair this country and then that'll lead to us bettering the world.  So that's why I went on Alternative Spring Break last year and why i want to keep doing service, and hopefully doing service will inspire others and it will be a way to pay it forward.

• Brotherhood:  Brotherhood (or sisterhood) is something that every Fraternity (or sorority) strives to teach and advocate to each other.  It is that connection amongst each other that keeps us strong and gives us the ability to change the world.  If we lose that we go from being a Fraternity to a frat. And that is something that none of us want.  The relationships I hold with my Brothers and the values we as a fraternity hold are what make us unique and strong.  If we lose that we are just a bunch of guys living in a house together (well they would be, I'm an R.A. and live in a residence hall). 

I guess that would sum of my values - or at least the ones I can think of right now - but there's much more than that, for everyone.  There's everything that you believe in, everything that encompasses your personality. And at the end of the day, very few people can truly list or describe all their values.  But hey what do I know? I'm just a math kid in a Fraternal Leadership class.  

P.S. Everyone should check out the RockMelt browser at www.RockMelt.com it's basically Google Chrome on crack. It's sweet.