We recently had an interesting conversation with a local entrepreneur in Los Angeles. He suggested that in today’s world, many people are creating their own ‘bespoke value systems’, basically their own personal toolkit on how to live. This could include a bit of meditation or yoga here, or some personal development podcast or self-help book there.
Most people are building these toolkits, either consciously, by the more proactive ones, or unconsciously, for those that just accept various inputs on how to live, without necessarily noticing or directing it. He then asked a good question: is there a way for people to share these personal values with others? To show others what they deeply value, and connect through that?
It’s an interesting thought, and I think the instinct is right; however, I think the issue is not so much that we have differing values. If you spend enough time with almost any other human being, you will quickly find out that, as it pertains to living a meaningful life, most people value the same things, from the importance of relationships to understanding the importance of forgiveness. We might all use very different ways to describe these values, but in essence they are the same. Studies have concluded the same: that most people value the same things, although they do prioritize them slightly differently.
So the challenge isn’t really how to express unique values, but how to give people a common language to describe what’s already inside of them. This is all part of what we’re trying to do with Rokk. Our guiding themes for living a meaningful life gives us common words and structure, and we build on that with shared rituals and experiences for our members in local communities to help bring who we already are to life.