Attitudes and Personal Honor

Honor is a peculiar word, because it means many things to many people. Life has become so labeled, sanitized and organized we seldom think about its meaning any more. In the past, honor was the motive for a person to lay down their life to save another.

It was the reason for duels, where someone shot or stabbed someone else before it was done to them. Honor also meant paying back a debt 30 years or so after the fact. Take the intepretation of honor far enough, and we could justify dropping an atom bomb to satisfy its meaning.

In terms of the human condition, honor has many meanings. How do you know which one is right for you? While honor's meaning is specific, its interpretation is individual and elastic.

Where do we find the meaning of honor ? If it is hidden in our thoughts, it will shift in accordance with our likes, dislikes and motivations. This is not a solid foundation to build a house of honor on. Maybe the meaning is in how life treats us. Since we all have good days and bad days, the yardstick of honor would shrink and expand accordingly.

Where to look for a reasonable well-spring of honorable intention? Looking at the material world, we have trouble unearthing a reasonable source, since the world goes through cycles of expansion and contraction, scarcity and plenty, war and peace.

If the answer does not lay outside, maybe it lies inside. Perhaps the basic meaning of honor is a matter of heart. Only our hearts remain constant, because they are of a spiritual origin where all is one, eternal and unconditional. Time, space and gravity are linked in an endless dance of dualism; here and there, space and solid, coming and going.

To our thinking minds this dance is separation and isolation; in the same way that the dancing dervish is a blur to the watching eye. There is nothing blurry about the dance to the dervish; there is nothing blurry about honor to the heart.

I say honor is personal, coming from the heart and unique to the individual's code of ethics. What is honorable to me may not be so to you. Yet, since we are all human, we must contain similarities of what honor means. For honor to come from the heart, it must present itself in the shape of your personal code of ethics.

We know when we have let ourselves down, or broken our personal set of standards in some way. We know because heart whispers truth to the mind, and when there is quiet in the mind, it hears.

This is why it is important to take time to be alone with your thoughts. Walk in the woods or on the beach, meditate or do whatever quiet activity you care to. This calm motion lulls the body and the judging mind, allowing the quiet guidance of heart to make its truth known to you. Then we need to express this truth.

Erica Jong put it well when she said "Everyone has truth, but few of us have the courage to follow it into the dark places it leads us." The darkness is the place we need to go; in order to discover that we are running from something that isn't chasing us.

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