Bound by Intangibles

Honor is a very difficult ideal to describe. It’s a very difficult ideal to obtain, in part due to the difficulty to define it. I’ve found myself lately concerned with trying to be more “honorable”, more reliable, more Will Turner then Jack Sparrow. Today I went and saw the second pirates movie, during which I started to notice a lot of the different motifs popping up (my eleventh grade English teacher would be proud). The main motifs that I was concerned with though was that of honor, and that of the dichotomy of good and evil that a man can possess. It’s really interesting, because in particular with the second theme, I had noticed that there’s a part where the pirates are visiting this shamanistic woman/witch, that she asks them what it is that drives all men crazy, and the pirates all threw out a bunch of relevant answers, including gold, freedom, and one of the slightly less bright pirates said something about pondering about the dichotomy of good and evil in man. I kind of enjoyed that small little quip, regardless of if the pointing out the significance was actually intended or not. Either way, the main driving force behind the movie to me was the idea of honor. How do attain it? It’s interesting since it seems to go hand-in-hand with this shirt I got from Express a while back (great sales lately, thank god for my mom buying all the 14-14.5 1MX shirts she can find) that had this great quote on it. In fact, that gives me an idea; Instead of writing a long winded post about what exactly honor is, I’ll just list a bunch of examples that I think would qualify as honorable acts, starting with the quote from the shirt.

“To rule is not to reign but to garner respect, to lead by example and not by show of force. It is the involvement in the affairs of others and not meddling in them. This will pave the way to honor and once you attain honor, you should never once let it go.”

Honor is not telling your friend that you’ll come pick them up in half an hour, honor is telling them you’ll pick them up in half an hour and actually showing up.

Honor is the ability to hold your tongue about what you perceive as an individual’s flaws when you are in the company of others.

Honor is not having to smoke a cigarette when your friends are doing it.

Honor is electing to spend the night with your roommate because you realize s/he won’t have anything else to do if you’re to go out with your friends.

Honor is telling your friends not to mess with some stupid girl’s AIM who happens to save her password on a public computer.

Honor is making promises, and fulfilling your promises.

Honor is holding the door open.

Honor is picking up a dirty towel/napkin/tissue and throwing it away so you don’t leave the place in bad condition.

Honor is helping your parents with yard-work without being prompted to do it.

Honor is when someone is humbled that you say the words “I’ll be there” and trusting that you’ll get it done.

Honor is being able to admit when you are wrong.

Honor is picking up that guy’s notebook who dropped it in class and now its ten feet from him and two feet from you.

Now with that small little list of a couple examples, I whole-heartedly realize how idealistic and naïve I sound by saying these things. Words like honor, trust, and friendship all go together like Evan and Jaron, and they’re things I find myself thinking about constantly (also like Evan and Jaron…though I think they were constantly thinking about some girl). Regardless of the idealism, especially in the cynical, sarcastic, Raphael filled world we live in, we should all strive to be Leonardos, and that’s easier when you see other people doing it. I don’t really know where I’m going with this, other then to state that honor is not an empty idea, its something that is very, very, very worthy of pursuing, though unlike the quote on that Express shirt, I don’t think honor is something you can attain. It’s not a measurable quantity, (obviously), and we should always be looking for others to act as beacons of honor. I think this one pirate one time said something like “every man must at one time be tempted to ship out, hoist the black flag, and start slitting throats”, and while that may be true, we should all strive to be Will Turners, not Jack Sparrows. And we should all look for Keira Knightleys.

On a separate note, I’ve started to note that my readership is growing? Not really anything I intended, but it’s definitely really flattering to hear. Who would have thought that someone would want to read this idealistic crap? I sure don’t.