HOW DO we become more prudent? By being more wise. But how do we acquire wisdom? Wisdom is rooted in values. The term “values” is derived from the word valuable, or anything that is precious or important to us. When you ask a person, what are your values? It is tantamount to asking what you hold important in your life.
The ideal important things in life are faith, family,
friends, work or profession. Normally no
one would answer, “The things that are important to me are wealth, popularity
and pleasure”. These are the three
“worldly” things that are the opposites to values. They have been the main sources of vice or
bad habits with the likes of greed (love for money), vanity (love for honor)
and hedonism (love for pleasure). In
the corporate world, no company would make the foundation of its existence on
vices. Companies’ vision and mission are
always rooted on values or more specifically corporate values.
This brings us to the second definition of values: values
are principles or beliefs in life that are proper to us as human beings. Doesn’t this sound close to the definition of
virtue? The answer is yes. Virtues are defined as good habits. And what is appropriate for us humans are
good actions or doing good things to ourselves and to our neighbor. Oftentimes virtues and values are interchangeable. Philosophers or theologians would say values
refer to good thoughts or good ideas and virtues refer to good actions. Virtues in other words are values put into
action.
Some examples of the virtues are honesty, respectfulness,
loyalty, patience, and charity. To help
us practice these virtues we need prudence.
Prudence is defined as the virtue that disposes our intelligence to
discern in every circumstance what is morally good from what is morally
evil. Or it is simply defined as
choosing good over evil. The virtue of
prudence is like our tour guide in making decisions.
Every single day we make a lot of decisions. Let’s subtract those that are not moral in
nature such as choosing what toothpaste brand to buy, or whether to take a taxi
or ‘angkas’ motorbike to work. Prudence
is to be applied more to life’s important or moral decisions. Whether to go home now to be with my family
or to continue with my work at the office.
Whether to go with my barkada for a night out or go straight home and
study for my exams tomorrow. Whether to
be honest in my work or to acquire easy money in the form of bribery or graft
and corruption. These are the kind of
situations and decisions in life where prudence is a valuable tool.
Even in the corporate world, a company president who is
faced with big decisions for his or her workers would be very much helped by
this virtue. Whether to fire some workers because of some economic crunch or
make them work with reduced hours because workers have a family to feed, is not
an easy decision to make. Company
presidents and all of us ought to remember that decision making is all about
values clarification as Bo Sanchez would say.
Meaning we should make decisions based on the highest values and for the
greatest good for the greatest number.
In other words, it’s all about doing the right thing.
So, if you are confused on what to do or what decision to
make. Think. What is the right thing to
do? Which is equivalent to saying, what values do I choose here to resolve my situation?
And then do it. Sometimes the decision
is so important you need time to think it over.
In these cases, prudence will tell you, you need to consult
a person whom you respect and look up to or someone who really cares for
you. Parents, teachers, priests and
guidance counselors are a good source for guidance and advice. A trusted friend will also do if he or she is
someone who has been living an exemplary life.
Prudence is meant to help us make the right decisions in life. When we choose to do the right thing, there
will be no regrets regardless of whether we were successful or not. What is important is we choose what is good
in the sight of God and get to sleep well at night.
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