Honor

Est Sularis Oth Mithas - "My Honor Is My Life"
-Oath of the Knights of Solamnia (Dragonlance books)

An interesting quote wouldn't you say? Although it is a creed by which a fictional group of characters live by, it certainly has a basis in real life as well.

What is honor exactly? Is it a set of rules to follow? A code of conduct? An attitude? It is all of these things and more. Honor is a personal commitment to yourself to uphold the things that you believe in. To live your life in a manner that does not belittle those beliefs. Those beliefs must have a strong basis on what is good and what is right; things like not breaking a promise, not taking advantage of those weaker than you are simply for personal gain, etc.

Honor is a very important characteristic in a person. Many may wonder why that is. The answer is very simple. If you are without honor, then no one will trust you. You will have no true friends because they will have no faith in you. You will not be trusted by your boss or your co-workers for the same general reason. Once you prove that you have no honor, life becomes much harder.

Honor is important for an even greater reason than that. If you are without honor, then there is nothing to control how you conduct yourself, except perhaps fear. Those who are without honor have no qualms about abusing the trust of others, about how they interact with people or how they behave in general.

It is a shame that honor is a principle that is in serious decline throughout the world. Just look at the news. Corporations scamming and stealing from their investors, people getting in trouble for all kinds of bad things, everything from murder to theft to drug dealing, the list goes on and on. This is because a large majority of people have little or no honor anymore.

"Well, what can I do about all of that?" you might ask. The bottom line is, you can do nothing to make a person be honorable. You can only hold to your own honor and hope that they will follow your example. Others are not important in the end. Your honor is up to you to have or to lose. If you know something is wrong, don't do it. If you can stop someone from doing evil, then it is your obligation to do so.

Honor is one of the highest, if not THE highest of the ideals of humanity. To be considered honorable was to thought highly of by others, and an accolade of great worth. The Japanese embodied the spirit of this ideal in the form of some the greatest warriors the world has ever known...the Samurai. These great fighters believed in a code known as Bushido, the Way of the Warrior.

This code laid down rules that the samurai lived and died by. One example was that if a samurai was dishonored, he would take his own life, rather than live with the shame of the dishonor. Can you imagine that? A person who considered their honor to be so valuable, that life was not worth living if they lost it. How many people today believe in their honor that much?

Honor is not something that you have some of the time, or practice when it suits you. To have true honor means you must live every day and make every decision with honor in mind. Before committing to an action, you must weigh whether or not it goes against what you believe to be right. Whether or not it is an honorable thing that you do.

Remember this, you are the only one who can lose your honor for you. Nothing and no one else can. It is your personal decisions, often on a daily basis, that will determine whether or not you have honor. No matter what happens in this life, as long as you live your life in accordance with what you believe in, your honor will always remain intact...and no one can ever take that away from you.