It’s all too easy to let our routines and practices lean on context.
Timing, location, technology, and people all create our context, and it’s natural to pin our practices on those pillars.
When our context changes, it takes time to adjust those habits. Change them all at once, and we might even be left floundering.
That’s where values give us direction.
A writer writes regardless of the context: With a keyboard, a pen, or scratching in the dirt of a prison cell floor with a stick.
An artist paints on canvas, on walls, on skin, and on the sides of an invading army’s tanks.
A leader leads at home, at work, in a restaurant with friends, and on the pockmarked streets of a shell-shocked town.
Changing context is not an excuse to forego our values and practices.
It’s an opportunity to reinforce them.