Faith & Values · A Decembers list
The beliefs you lived by, set down one at a time
You have said some of these things a hundred times at the dinner table, and worn others down to a look across the room. But nobody has written down where they came from, or the day keeping one cost you something real.
This is the list for those principles. One line each, or a few when the story behind it earns them.
Free to start. Private from the first word.
Where this list lives
This is a list in Decembers — the place a life gets written down one question at a time.
Decembers asks the questions no one thought to ask, keeps the answers in one permanent Chronicle, and holds them on one Timeline that reads in order. You answer. Decembers does the writing.
- Lists
- A list for every kind of life, and every turn one takes. Pick one and start answering.
- Timeline
- Your answers arrange themselves in order. Seeing a whole life laid out this way is something else.
- Inner Circle
- Not social media. The few people you name are the only ones it is ever shared with.
Begin with one list. The rest follows.
One line is enough
Write down one thing you believe, and the reason for it comes with it — the person who taught it to you, the day you nearly gave it up and didn't.
A value is nothing on its own. "Be honest" is a fortune cookie. What matters is the account you lost by telling the truth, the uncle who never lied and never got rich, the argument you had with yourself in the car before you did the right thing. That texture is what makes a principle believable to someone who comes after you — and it is exactly what disappears when a belief is only ever spoken and never set down.
No one writes a book of their principles; it would come out preachy, and you know it. But a list asks for one at a time. You put down the thing you believe, then the day it was tested, then who you got it from. Next week another one surfaces while you are doing the dishes. Over a year they gather into something your grandchildren can actually hold — not a sermon, but the working rules of a life that was really lived.
How it works
- 01
Pick this list
It’s waiting, already written. There is no blank page to face.
- 02
Fill in what comes
A year, a line, a photograph. Five minutes or an hour.
- 03
Invite who was there
They add what you forgot. You decide what stays.
- 04
Share it, or don’t
One quiet page for your Inner Circle. No link, no feed.
The kinds of things that end up here
The ones you inherited
Principles handed down so early you can't remember learning them. A grandfather who tipped generously because he'd once waited tables. A mother who wouldn't let you speak badly of anyone who wasn't in the room. Write down whose voice it is you still hear.
The ones that cost you
The value isn't proven until it's expensive. The job you left rather than sign something. The friend you told a hard truth and lost for a while. These are the entries your family will read twice, because they show a belief holding under weight.
The ones you hope they keep
The things you most want the next generation to carry, said plainly so there's no mistaking them. Not a lecture — a handing-over. How you hope they'll treat money, strangers, their word, and the people who have less than they do.
Where a value tends to come from
- Family
- The rules of the house you grew up in — some spoken, most just enforced by the way the adults lived.
- Faith
- What a tradition, a teacher, or a text asked of you, and which parts of it you kept when you were old enough to choose.
- Work
- The principles the job taught — a handshake that meant something, a boss who did right by people when it wasn't required.
- Hard years
- What you learned when money was short or things fell apart, and what you decided you would never do to get out of it.
- A mentor
- The one person who modeled a thing so completely you took it for granted it was how everyone lived.
- Your own children
- The values you found only by having to explain yourself to a child who asked why.
Other lists you may like
Start with any one of them. Every answer lands on the same Timeline.
Begin
A record of what you actually stood for
Not the things you owned, but the rules you kept when they were hard. Start with the one belief you'd least want your family to lose, and the reason behind it.