thoughts on an honorable topic. Honor.

I am honored. But wait. What does that mean? To be honored. to have honor? The dictionary holds many thoughts on the matter, but I do not believe what Merriam Webster thinks is indicative of what honor truly means. The best meanings come from the human beings experience what these words mean. In my experience, a person with honor has several qualities that set him or her apart from everyone else.

A person with Honor has integrity. What does integrity mean, you ask? Integrity is the ability to stay true to yourself, no matter what is going on. Whether it be on a test, and keeping your answer, even when you see another answer on another paper that may be a titch better, or following through with something, even though you may not want to, or it may not benefit you in the moment. Integrity means being accountable for your actions. It means not allowing others to do the work for you. When you let others do your work, you are letting yourself down. It does not mean being perfect, it simply means doing the work, admitting your mistakes, and learning from them. Integrity is showing the world that you are a complete person, and that you have the ability to honor yourself.

While integrity is something that I believe is a defining characteristic of honor, I believe that there are other things to help define it.

The ability to go through the day without boasting your accomplishments is something that few have the ability to do, but it is one of the most honorable things one can achieve. I believe that humility is another one of the Describing characteristics of honor. To be Humble is to have no ego, for the ego clouds the mind, and does not show everyone the real person that you are. It takes away from a person’s integrity. It allows you to be influenced by what others think of you. Humility takes the ego out of the equation, without removing your spirit.

The last thing a person with honor has is the ability to do the right thing. Not simply the ability to do the right thing, but to do the right thing for the right reasons. Doing it because you know you will be rewarded is not the right reason. Doing it because other people told you to is not the right reason. To me, the right reason is this: it is the right thing to do. That seems reason enough to me. If someone asks you for help with a project, isn’t it logical that you help them? It seems that way to me. I believe that if you do the right thing simply to do the right thing, you have begun to have honor in your actions.

As you go about your business as human beings, I encourage all of you to keep a few things in mind. Remember that if you are humble, you may not gain the recognition from others that you seek, but you do gain the respect of others. Remember that the ego is perhaps not always the best thing to have around. Remember that If you are true to yourself, if you keep your integrity if you don’t let your ego get in your way, if you have humility in all that you do, you will have no limits as to how far you can go. It is as one of my teachers once told me “The second you try to be better than someone else is the second you have placed a limitation upon yourself”