Honor

Honesty, fairness, or integrity in one's beliefs and actions: a man of honor. What better could be said of someone then he was a man of honor. Words like honor and integrity are lost in today’s high speed world of text messaging. The one true goal is to reach the top first, climbing on the bodies of friends and enemies alike. We have lost something special in our world and I feel strongly that without the concept of honor we are only at the beginning of a very long dark passage.

Sophocles said “Rather fail with honor then succeed by fraud” and once again I am sure that reading these words it’s very easy to give a harrumph and say “but of course” these decisions are simple. However, we quickly step from our homes and fail miserably to apply this simple concept to our lives and actions. How do we live our lives with honor? Socrates told us over 2400 years ago: “The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world is to be in reality what we would appear to be; all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice and experience of them.”

Making the decision to be an honorable person isn’t always the easiest. It is uncomfortable, difficult, and at times dangerous. Making the decision to act honorable cannot be done in the face of adversity. It must be practiced like every other skill. You must live with the concept of being an honorable person day in and day out, when it is easy, when the decisions are simple. Only then can you decide to turn away from the easy path and take the hard and difficult road to honor when it is most important.

The taste of honor is bittersweet. Like a lone man who saves himself from the abyss only one person has any idea how heroic it was. Joseph Addison said it best: “Content thyself to be obscurely good. When vice prevails and impious men bear away, the post honor is a private station.” I am a Man of Honor.