There are values and there are values.
In a coffee shop, if someone mentioned a value I agreed with, I would nod to them across the table, showing my approval.
In a voting booth, if I saw a referendum on something I value, I would vote in favor.
On a busy day, when a referendum was being held, in spite of the inconvenience I would make time to go to the polls and vote in favor of something I value.
I would speak up in a social setting about something I valued.
I would take some time to learn more about something I valued, so I could speak about it in more detail at a community meeting.
I would learn how to speak or write more effectively on behalf of something I valued.
I would spend time to seek allies and build partnerships for activism on behalf of something I valued.
I would learn what attitudes, skills, tools, and affiliations give activism a better chance to succeed, and put these things into practice.
Etc.
This list was provoked by a sentence written by Vaclav Havel: “We came to understand (or, to be precise, some of us did) that the only genuine values are those for which one is capable, if necessary, of sacrificing something.”*
Values for which we might nod in affirmation across the table of a coffee shop are one kind of value.
*Source: Page 137, “The Co-responsibility of the West,” in The Art of the Impossible: Politics and Morality in Practice by Vaclav Havel. Original article in Foreign Affairs, 12/22/93.