Values, or: Why Some People Don’t Know What the Fuss Is About

The topic was not chosen by The Mayor.

This point mattered to him, and he said so early. Janita had selected it: values. And already, before the discussion had properly begun, The Mayor admitted something that framed everything that followed — he found it difficult to talk about values at all.

Not because he rejected them, but because, growing up, values were never discussed as such. They were absorbed. Parents taught right and wrong. Life happened. Decisions were made. Agreement or disagreement followed, but rarely reflection in abstract terms. You lived decently. That was the end of it.

Which is why he asked the others — Ismar in Brazil, Ritesh in India — whether they felt the same unease.

Different Comfort Levels With the Same Word

Ismar answered first. He said he didn’t think he had a problem talking about values, but added a caveat: it depends on the conversation. Perhaps by the end, he said, he might change his mind.

For him, values were not declarations. They were situational. He followed them when others were watching. When no one was observing, things could look different. Values, in his view, were not only what one believed — they were also what one performed.

Ritesh, by contrast, said he felt comfortable with the topic. What troubled him was not talking about values, but deciding which values should guide a decision. He explained that he didn’t consciously label values when making choices. They were embedded. They came from growing up. Decisions happened through them, not about them.

And to explain himself, he immediately reached for an example.

Family as a Decision-Maker

When Ritesh spoke about choosing where to live, the value surfaced clearly. For him, a place was not selected solely by salary, opportunity, or independence. His parents mattered. Being able to visit home frequently mattered. Family extended beyond wife and children to parents and relatives — connection itself was part of the decision.

This was not something he calculated every time. It was already part of his thinking process.

The Mayor found this difficult to reconcile with his own experience. When he left home at 21, he went where work was available. Proximity to parents never entered the discussion. Leaving home was expected — welcomed even. The only practical concern was whether he could afford a room.

So he questioned how family could be such a central value when Ritesh himself lived thousands of kilometers away from his hometown.

Ritesh clarified: distance was not choice — it was constraint. If even a slight opportunity arose to live near his parents, he would take it, even at the cost of half his salary. Time and money limited visits. After marriage, the absence became heavier. The desire to be present in daily family life didn’t disappear simply because geography made it difficult.

Ismar’s relationship to family decisions was different again. When he left home, he had only his mother and sisters. He loved his mother deeply. But family proximity was not a factor in choosing where to live. It never entered his calculations. For him, distance carried no moral weight.

How Values Are Learned: Explanation or Obedience

The Mayor then turned the discussion toward childhood.

He recalled his father saying that democracy had no place in the family home. As long as one lived under his roof, one followed his rules. End of discussion.

He asked Ritesh whether decisions in his childhood had been explained, or simply imposed.

Ritesh said they were never explained. You were told what to do, and you did it. Reasons were not discussed. Even now, he said, many decisions happened without explanation, especially from older generations. Younger people might resist more openly, but outcomes rarely changed. Perhaps, he suggested, the next generation would be different.

Asked whether he would do things differently with his own children, Ritesh said he hoped so — but doubted that change would be complete. Habits passed down were hard to fully escape. His wife, he noted, had grown up with more say, and that would likely influence their family dynamic.

He added, with some humor, that while men appeared to be in charge in Indian households, children knew the truth. When fathers said no, children went to their mothers. Comfort came first — and decisions, quietly, from there.

How Ismar Chooses

When asked about decision-making, Ismar described a pattern that repeated throughout his life. Most decisions were not ideal choices between good options. They were obligations. He usually had one option he wanted and several he didn’t. He chose the least bad among them.

He gave an example from his time in the Brazilian Air Force. He wanted to move to Campo Grande because of a relationship. Financial realities pushed him to Manaus instead. Later, with more options available, he chose a location influenced again by personal ties. The relationship didn’t survive the distance. Still, the decision had made sense at the time.

Sometimes, he implied, decisions orbit people. And sometimes, those orbits collapse.

Choosing Between Two Evils

The Mayor asked both men whether they remembered moments when every option was unpleasant — choosing between “cholera and pest,” as he put it.

Ritesh described a job offer from a professor after college. One option was becoming a lab instructor under poor working conditions. The other was entering the job market without a plan or financial buffer. He rejected the job — but lied about the reason, saying he was moving home.

When pressed on why he hadn’t simply declined honestly, Ritesh explained the conflict. In his upbringing, hurting someone directly was worse than deceiving gently. His value of honesty collided with his value of not causing harm. He chose what felt like the lesser damage.

He added that this pattern extended into broader professional culture. Notice periods, expectations, and social pressure made direct refusal difficult. People often used family-related explanations not because they wanted to deceive, but because the system left little room for blunt truth.

The Mayor contrasted this with European directness, admitting that he could be abrupt to the point of abrasiveness. Asked how such behavior would be perceived in India, Ritesh said it would be seen as deeply negative — selfish, divisive, and relationship-breaking.

The same value — honesty — could appear as integrity in one culture and cruelty in another.

Ismar, for his part, spoke of decisions involving relationships. Leaving someone you care about because being with them disrupts your life, he said, was among the worst choices he had faced. Some decisions offered no clean resolution — only endurance.

Regret and Responsibility

A quieter moment followed when the conversation turned to regret.

The Mayor asked whether the pain of regret came more from outcomes or from betraying one’s own values.

Ismar said he rarely felt he betrayed his values. More often, he regretted results. Sometimes there wasn’t enough time to think. Sometimes thinking more only created confusion. There was no guarantee that more reflection led to better decisions.

Ritesh agreed that outcomes hurt more. He recalled a childhood argument with a cousin over something trivial — a pen — that led to years of silence. Nothing material was lost, but the emotional distance lingered. Even remembering it caused discomfort.

Small decisions, he suggested, could echo longer than major ones.

Age, Distance, and Changing Judgments

The Mayor reflected on growing older — how he no longer wanted to be young again, even if he occasionally missed the body that came with it. He asked whether age had changed what the others could identify with.

Ismar answered with an unexpected example: football. Once a passion, now something he rejected. Physical reasons played a part, but so did politics. To him, football symbolized distraction — millions invested emotionally and financially while systemic issues went unchallenged. He described it as a form of alienation.

The Mayor pushed back gently, noting that leisure and escape had their place. But he recognized that Ismar wasn’t condemning sport itself — he was critiquing where collective attention was spent.

Ending Without a Definition

As the conversation drew to a close, The Mayor asked the simplest question of all: what are values?

Ismar answered plainly. For him, values meant being a polite, normal human being. Respecting others. Nothing more elaborate was required. He didn’t see the need for extended discussion.

Ritesh added that values were mostly about other people — about how one’s actions affected them. Most people didn’t consciously analyze values. They acted through them. Problems arose only when one tried to categorize them.

The discussion ended where it had begun: without resolution.

But something had shifted.

The Mayor recognized that his discomfort with “values talk” was itself a generational value — a preference for action over abstraction. Ritesh demonstrated how values could require negotiation, softness, and compromise to preserve relationships. Ismar showed that values could be deeply held without ever being articulated.

They had not agreed on what values were.

But they had recognized them — in distance, in silence, in family ties, in honesty bent by care.

And perhaps that, quietly, was enough.