Origins of Sustainable Values
Authors: Barkauskaitė Marijona 
Published: August 2020

The present article focuses on the attempts to disclose the sustainable values in the creative output of Hab. Dr. Lukšienė as manifested in her two scholarly studies, ‘The Meanings of Time’ (Laiko prasmės) and ‘Life and Creative Work of Jonas Biliūnas’ (Jono Biliūno gyvenimas ir kūryba). The in-depth analysis of the two studies allows to assert that Hab. Dr. Lukšienė‘s fundamental value-based views and beliefs had been primarily shaped by her family environment (in the first place – on her mother Julija Janulaitytė- Biliūnienė-Matjošaitienė’s side) as well as by the processes of complex sociocultural development of that time. In turn, her value-based world outlook had also been strongly influenced by her mother’s fist husband Jonas Biliūnas’ life story and creative output.

Hab. Dr. Lukšienė is generally considered as a personality of phenomenal nature whose major concerns, even since her very young days, centered around a range of issues about how to educate individuals as the main agents of the nation and society at large. She felt obliged and was guided by ‘a sense of responsibility for everything that was taking place around me’. By communicating face to face with that exceptional personality as well as by studying her scholarly heritage, one cannot help admiring the depth and breadth of the scope of her values. This it is only natural to search for explanations and implications in order to answer questions about the origins of her sustainable values, about her dedications and fidelity to her values despite the most hurting effects in some unusually complex situations of her professional and social life, and about her ability to preserve composure and self - esteem in the most unfavorable circumstances.

Therefore, the aim of the present article was to reveal the sources and origins of Meilė Lukšienė’s sustainable values. Dr. Lukšienė’s warning about the necessity to be cautious of ‘not floating on the surface in one’s daily existence’ (1993) had been one of her own guidelines in life since her very young days and she proved being capable of ‘not floating on the surface’ in what she did.

The basic sources for our analysis were Meilė Lukšienė’s prepared studies ‘Life and Creative Work of Jonas Biliūnas’ and ‘The Meanings of Time’. The main method used was the ethnographic study that enabled us to identify the values under discussion in different forms of their manifestations in a variety of life situations, also materials about the people from Meilė Lukšienė’s closest environment: her parents, family friends and other contemporaries. We have restricted our study to a certain number of values only, namely, the ones of freedom, education, national awareness and dignity, respect and care of other people, responsibility and obligation. We were very much aware of the interplay of the values under discussion as well as of their underlying significance in shaping all other personal values in the individual’s value-based existence.

Meilė Lukšienė’s mother Julija Janulaitytė (Biliūnienė-Matjošaitienė), mainly in her reminiscences about her parents’ mode of living, as well as about her own childhood, revealed a great variety of contexts, in which their family-observed values can be traced and explored. M. Lukšienė’s mother Julija Janulaitytė’s family advocated and observed values focused on the issues of social, cultural, educational, economic and political character in their most varied manifestations.

Our second major source of analysis was Meilė Lukšienė’s study ‘Life and Creative Work of Jonas Biliūnas’. The choice was preconditioned by our goal to investigate two issues under discussion: 1. To what extent Meilė Lukšienė’s mother Julija Janulaitytė relied on her family-specific values, acquired in her early years of growing and maturing, throughout her independent life, within the framework of family- life, professional world and society–bound activities; 2. What specific value-based views Meilė Lukšienė pointed out and defied while studying the life and creative output of J. Biliūnas on the basis of recorded memoirs presented by the writer’s contemporaries, oral accounts as well as on the basis of Meilė Lukšienė’s mother’s reminiscences.

In the process of our study, we exceptionally focused on the following values: those of freedom, national dignity, care and readiness for assistance, learning, and the perceived relevance of education, responsibility and obligation. We also admit that these values become interrelated in specific and multi-faceted contexts of their manifestation with other values also finding place under certain circumstances.

Our carried out research of M. Lukšienė’s two studies, ‘The Meanings of Time’ and ‘Life and Creative Work of Jonas Biliūnas’, alongside our reflections on face-to-face communication acts with M. Lukšienė, also on the basis of her diaries, written prior to the years of her university studies , enabled us to draw the following conclusions:

The sustainability of values under discussion, namely those of freedom, national dignity, care and readiness for assistance, learning and the perceived relevance of education, responsibility and obligation comes from their originating sources: the family of her grandparents, Agota and Matas Janulaičiai, her own mother Julija Janulaitytė and her first husband J.  Biliūnas’ father Stasys Matjošaitis, with the permeating light of Biliūnas – specific perception of meaningful living as ‘the lantern of happiness’ –seeker.

It should be pointed out that the values under discussion were certain to acquire enhanced effect in the mature personality of Meilė Lukšienė and they had an enormous emancipating impact on other people Meilė Lukšienė came into contact with. M. Lukšienė-perceived freedom is understood as ‘a process with its distinct manifestations on the surface, but in equal measure, and even more so – as an inner process involving the capability of learning and teaching how to build freedom as well as how to live with it’, without violating the freedom of other individuals but rather asserting the attitude of responsibility and fairly manifested understanding of honest freedom.

The sustainability of national dignity and its manifestations can be traced in the process of cherishing, developing and communicating this understanding on the levels of a separate individual, nation and state, in an attempt to educate ‘openness to the world and otherness of personality, but simultaneously – to preserve the fundamental understanding of own culture’.

In turn, the major objective of education and school is to perform the role of ‘eye-opener and mind-activator’, on the road to personal cognition, thinking, change, creativity and readiness to assist.

The values of responsibility and obligation are treated as ‘the process of building essentially different type of relationships, with the surrounding world’ through freely-chosen, honest and responsible behavior, these values ‘by no means coincide with partial processes of changing methodology alone or giving greater or smaller prominence to separate school subjects, they are not comparable to the amount of knowledge either’.

The very daily-life environment alongside the advocated and consistently followed values in the families of M. Lukšienė’s parents and grandparents lay at the basis of the most significant and sustainable M. Lukšienė’s values, which, in turn, facilitated the processes of developing emotional intelligence and well-represented wisdom resulting in aspirations to dedicate own life to undeniable devotion to her nation and its people.