Prioritize

​Prioritizing
I seem to have so many roles.  I am no doubt like everyone else in that regard, but that does not make it any easier.
I am a husband.  I love, nourish and protect my wife and help her to be all she can be.  I am a landowner.  I hopefully improve the property.  I am a brother.  I watch out for my family.  I am a volunteer.  I maintain both virtual and physical sites..  I am a priest in my family.  I look out for and encourage spiritual growth. I am a friend.  There are people I want the best for and facilitate it where I can.
I reckon friendship is a biggy in all the above.  One of my favourite sayings is “a friend is someone, who, when you make a mistake, does not think you have done a permanent job.”  In most cases mistakes are unfortunate events rather than permanent fixtures.  We all make em.  We all wish we hadn’t. It is moving on that matters to me.
A friend does not blab.  It seems everyone has things that are only brought out of the closest and shown to someone trustworthy.  That can be really liberating.  When trust is betrayed it is really hard to restore.  Some things need to be passed on to the powers that be.  Most don’t. 
It is important to me I say what I mean and mean what I say.  If feeling bad was the measure of success then I would be close to the top of the class when I fail to do what I say.  What I say is not to fob someone off, or to appease them because it is convenient.  Convenience is a slippery road.  I know I cannot please all the people all the time, but I am responsible for my actions - not the actions of others.
Another saying I like is “someone who will talk to you about someone else, will normally talk to someone else about you.”  It is a fact of life, so I like to give people nothing negative to talk about.  As the policeman says, “nothing to see here.”
That is enough to keep me busy.  I can abdicate any of my roles.  I can decide one can drop off the list but why would I?  They each matter.  They each have importance.
Is there any role that has greater importance than the others?  I find if I am the priest first all, the other things flow as they should.  If I needed to put a one next to anything it would be priest (in its original sense, not as we are seeing it today) but everything matters.
I did not mention financial management there.  I see it as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself.  I am a choices man.  I cannot use what I do not have.  If it is important, that makes me want it.  Not to see it accumulate, but to see it used or available.  I have never been a debt man.  If I do not have it, I should not spend it.  The home and car are the exceptions, but the goal for me is to wipe out debt as fast as I can.
These things are non-negotiable for me.  Either they mean something, or they mean nothing.