Babies, Baths and Ch-change
When was the last time you heard the expression: Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater?
Whenever a conversation approaches a threshold or a pivot point and change seems inevitable, someone may use the expression, urging a moment’s pause to revisit goals, vision and priorities. Caring for the baby is a universal expression of concern, across all species – bears, bees, buttercups and human beans. By ensuring that the baby is safe, we are agreeing to nurture, protect and consider the wellbeing of the collective.
It strikes me as an amazing irony of the times that the more we know about the world and the more we gain access to news and information, the more confused we become. We are confused about our core values, about the future for our babies and confused about our rights, responsibilities and priorities. Not throwing the baby out is a baseline, a common social value akin to ‘Do no harm’. The value to not harm others in our systems (family, work, community, ecological) is a fundamental guideline for decisions at home, at work and in our public spaces.
In November 2019, I did a search of the word ‘values’ and was directed to the VIA Institute’s website (where VIA stands for Values in Action, not the railway). This mission-driven, non-profit organization combines the scientific findings of psychology and social sciences, and encourages a practical approach for living life with a strengths-based perspective. (As opposed to a weakness-based perspective.)
The VIA Strengths Classification system is the social scientist’s version of the Taxonomical classification system familiar to every biology student. If you remember ‘Dear King Philip Came Over For Good Soup’ as a way to remember, Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, and so on, you know what I am talking about. If you are curious, take the online survey and get a free report of your strengths, ranked from one to twenty-four.
In my opinion, the VIA Classification system is exceptional, trustworthy and believable because it was developed by 50 scientists across the social science disciplines. Their working conclusions were based on survey results that studied tens of thousands of people, including members of a Masai tribe in Kenya and Inuit community in northern Greenland. The researchers also consulted the literature and writings of wisdom traditions, philosophers and theologians across the ages.
I can only pretend to imagine the rich and polarizing conversations that finally culminated in a decision that said, “These are the Six Virtues and These are 24 Character Strengths”. Imagine a consensus process that brought fifty smart and passionate people to a list that was ‘good enough’ and ready for public scrutiny.
In this classification system, our human strengths are attributed to one of six core Virtues: Wisdom, Courage, Humanity, Justice, Temperance and Transcendence.
Character Strengths are defined as: The human traits that we value, admire, respect and cherish in one another, such as: Creativity, Curiosity, Love, Kindness, Bravery, Forgiveness, Social intelligence, and gratitude.
I am happy to report that a subsequent study identified that the top three strengths most highly correlated with well-being are: Gratitude, Hope and Love. The tagline of the Scientific American Article reads: If you seek high well-being, your best bets are gratitude and love of learning. I believe the science is good.
Clearly, these are days of colossal change, chaos and confusion. As we navigate new stretches of water and new ways of being good neighbours, we also need to recommit to our values, our babies, and revisit our best grounding of strengths and virtues. And as every child of this universe knows – babies and bathwaters can reveal many wise and essential truths about change and changing.
