LETTERS: GRADUATION SPEECH HAS GOOD ADVICE

To the editor:

Various articles in the Southeast Missourian during the first week of December reminded me of remarks delivered by Dr. William J. Petrek at the May 1990 graduation ceremony at Richmond College. The following excerpts from Petrek's address are offered with the belief that some of us might gain valuable insights by reflecting on his ideas and words.

All of us share the experience of deciding what matters to us. We decide on our own, and we decide for ourselves. Although we give various names to what matters to us, the name used most frequently is values. What really matters to us is something truly valuable, so valuable it guides our lives.

In our lives, we categorize different values in several ways. We speak of social values, material values, spiritual values, cultural values and personal values. These kinds of values are not simply objects of curiosity in a personal museum of valuables. Rather, they orientate moral choices in our lives. They influence what we do and what we do not do. They help explain why we do what we do and why we refrain from doing certain things.

Each of us has a lifetime in which to identify what is valuable to us, a lifetime in which to choose our values. Many of these choices are made fairly early in life and often without deliberation. Nevertheless, we are not irrevocably locked into values chosen early in life. Some event redolent with personal meaning may cause deliberation and reflectivity producing a dramatic choice of what is valuable to us. Thus, a new value, or a renewed value that lay dormant in our lives, asserts itself.

From what sources do we acquire our values? Petrek says principally from three sources: 1. Our respective cultures. 2. Special experiences of family life. 3. Values manifested to us by personal and sometimes rather private experiences. You cannot escape choosing your set of values. The exigencies of life impose choice. Even by avoiding choice through flight, you made choices of values, and these values influence your moral behavior.

You have already chosen some of the values that guide your lives. Other choices await you at various crossroads.

ED WILLIAMS

Cape Girardeau