HONOR

The lost art of trying to do the right thing

Years ago a therapist said to me, “Marianne, we’re going to have an agreement here. In our sessions I don’t want you to quote A Course in Miracles. Not because I don’t think the principles are correct, or amazing, but because I don’t want you to hide behind them. Anything you can say through the Course, you should be able to just say as Marianne.”

It was a good exercise for me and I understood why he had done that. I’m reminded of his words a lot these days as I sometimes want to say to an entire culture, “Hey guys, let’s leave ‘support’ and ‘love’ out of our vocabulary for a year and see what happens, okay?”

We can use words to mask what’s really going on, saying things like “I support you” instead of actually doing anything to support. Or “I love you,” when how you have behaved sure as hell didn’t feel like love. And I’m sure I’ve done it as much as I’ve had it done to me. Hell, why have to think about actually doing something if you can just say it?

Beyond the importance of words like “support” and “love,” there are others that seem to me to have lost meaning in our culture - and much to our detriment. Words that seem to have lost their significance, as though they were simply quaint concepts no longer needed in the modern world. One that has come up recently in ways that loom large on my horizon is the word honor. And yes, having experienced the political world has a lot to do with it. I’ve never been involved in an area where the concept of honorable behavior is given such short shrift; in fact, where specifically dishonorable behavior is practiced so regularly, unchallenged, and with so little consequence. Long gone are the the days when a knight would sacrifice himself for his Lady’s honor. Today he’d be the first person to throw her under his horse.

Where words like “character,” “integrity,” “ethics,” and “honor” are no longer seen as core principles of right living, the culture that so abandoned them is going down. I don’t know if I ever had those words explained to me, exactly, but they were certainly demonstrated to me as a child. First of all, by my parents…conversations I heard at the dinner table…how my mother and father navigated their lives. In my home when I was growing up, there were clearly things more important than things.

But it was also the culture that surrounded me. Television shows like Andy Griffith and Bonanza - even Gunsmoke! - seemed always to include some lesson about being a better person. When I think about what so many kids see now, I shudder. And where family dinner conversations - if they even have actual conversations - are lacking in substantial content about the things that matter most in life, I feel such pity for the children.

I see plenty of people living splendid lives as well, of course, demonstrating all that is noble and true. And I have been so blessed by them personally. Clearly there is a tremendous cultural impulse to counteract the darkness that has beset us as a society. A declining culture can only be mended one conversation, one relationship, one project or activity at a time. We’re like a torn tapestry and we all have to be responsible for making the threads that we weave golden.

It is the only honorable thing to do.