Why Values Are Important in Human Life

Values relate to the aim of human life. For the achievement of the aim, men frame certain notions and these notions are called values. The term 'Values' refers to attitudes, preferences, lifestyles, normative frameworks, the symbolic universe, belief systems, and a network of meaning which men give to life. The term values may also refer to interests, pleasures likes, preferences, duties, moral obligations, desires, wants, needs, aversions, and attractions, and many other modalities of selective orientation.

• Definition of values according to 'Jules henry':-

" Values are something that we consider good such as love, kindness, contentment, fun, honesty, decency, relaxation, simplicity."
              

• Definition of values according to 'Satya sai baba':-

"Thinking with love is true feeling with love is peace. Acting with love is right conduct understanding with love is non-violence."

               A group of values derived from the first type finding expression in individual and collective attitudes and behavior is called functional values. Values are the main guiding forces in an individual's life. Whatever becomes a means of achieving happiness becomes valuable to us. For instance, all our thoughts, behavior, and actions are based on the values that an individual has. An appropriate values framework provides us with the ability to choose right over wrong and to differentiate between the two. Skills are the methods and practices that an individual develops to actualize the goals he/she has set in life. These are the techniques that are developed to achieve the happiness, success, and contentment that one seeks in life.
               Thus, though they are different from one another, they also complement one another. For instance, an individual values the conservation of the environment, as it is crucial for the survival of the human race in the future. Whatever he/she does to help conserve the environment, like not using plastic carry bags, not wasting water, using less paper, etc are the domains of the skills. From this example, it is clear that both values and skills are incomplete in isolation and thus require the other to make complete sense.

• Main values of the person:-

               To the capacities and dynamism correspond the values of ultimate truth, goodness, and beauty, as well as the moral values and happiness.

• The values of happiness:- Human beings as such are characterized by a sense of purpose directed towards union with a personal God. In turn, this produces ecstasy, joy, and happiness. Man is created for happiness, which consists not only in self-fulfillment but also with all persons and everything in communion with God. This communion of love is the final all-embracing fulfillment, the ultimate happiness no longer subject to any danger.  
• Moral Values:- Though it has been disputed that humans are characterized by conscience, whenever faced with evil, even though it may have been legalized by human law, people judge it as evil. As an ability rooted in the human being by the creator, conscience is directed towards moral values as a dynamism discriminating moral good and evil and making it possible to choose the good as a moral duty. conscience is the first judge of man and is speaks duty.
• The values of Beauty:- Although theories of the beautiful and of aesthetic experiences are so many that it is impossible to find a common dominator, nevertheless looking at the problem from the vantage point of a philosophy of being and of man's personal potentialities we can expect to achieve some understanding. Man is endowed with a capacity for admiration or fascination to which these correspond the value of the beautiful extending even to Absolute Beauty or God.
• The value of Truth:- Human history bears witness to the fact that man carries within himself a hunger for truth which does not allow him to rest until he reaches the ultimate truth, Which is God. This hunger expresses itself in the search to discover others and oneself. It may lead to practical pragmatic knowledge, ultimately, however, it leads one towards the ultimate mystery of being and forces one humbly to open oneself to its sphere of action. Thus, it leads to meditation and contemplation in which knower and known merge into oneness without losing their identities.
• The values of the Good:- To the capacity to love or 'be for' correspond to the good, both possible and actual. This capacity is rooted in the very structure of man's personal existence which defines itself by existing in relationship. Existing in a relationship has cognitive and aesthetic aspects also, but existing in a relationship of love means being a gift of the actual good. precisely because of love possible goods are changed into actuality. Along with beatific, cognitive, and aesthetic communion, in the communion of love, the lover and the beloved by becoming gifts for each other constitute an inseparable unity. This is the second half of the self: a communion of indivisible happiness.