The Weight of Honor

Real honor, as distinct from the fake honor of “face” or of being proud of your ancestors, your education, or some other honor that was mostly bestowed on you, is a harsh mistress.

It is particularly a harsh task mistress when you live in a civilization where the other kind of honor is emphasized and revered. I know because I watched my dad — a natural born paladin — carry his honor like Christ carried his cross. Rationally speaking it was a stupid thing to do, at least at first glance. Not only didn’t being incredibly honorable, having pride in his work, giving full measure packed down every day, not earn him any glory or praise, but it made the people he worked with and for assume he was stupid. After all, why couldn’t he be “smart” and cut corners, he must be stupid.

And yet he persisted, day after day, year after year, under the weight of being an honorable man, who followed his beliefs in the dignity of others and the duty he owed G-d, family and country. He’s still doing it, even though retired.

It is men and women like that who keep civilization going, even in sick cultures, even in those that are falling apart, even in places where everyday functioning is difficult.

If you think on it, you know those people.

They are not the “activists”; they don’t bang the drum for giving government money to people; they don’t talk about how much they speak for the voiceless or help the helpless.

They just get up in the middle of the night, put their pants on and drive across town with their daughter to pick up the daughter’s friend who was stranded by her boyfriend at a party for refusing to put out. They get up in the middle of the night, put their pants on, and go donated blood because they’re part of the rare blood club and someone had an accident and needs that blood type. And if you’re not the one who brought him the emergency, and you’re not in on it, you don’t know anything about it when you get up in the morning and he’s making breakfast (and giving you a bit of his apple, because that’s the tradition) just as cheerful and calm as ever. And you don’t know all the things he did for people until you’re much older: the money he gave from the little he had to help a young couple who’d got in trouble; standing with the girl marrying someone of another race when some of her family wouldn’t; writing stuff out for friends who were inarticulate. And working. Never taking time when he was needed. Sometimes working through the summer when everyone else was on vacation, because there was no backup and he had to keep things going.

This is not an eulogy for my dad — Thank G-d. I don’t think I could take his death right now — but just what I learned about real honor from him.

Honor is not comfortable. It forces you to do things you don’t want to do, like admit it’s your fault. Like make reparation. Like help people even when you’re mad at them and it’s the last thing in the world you want to do. Like pay it forward. Like sacrifice for the future. Like do the little thankless tasks as though every little thing were the most important ever, all adding up to doing your work the best you absolutely can, even when no one else does.

So why do people do it?

I think because it’s a deep set evolutionary valuable trait. And I’m not — NOT — going to argue if it’s inherited genetically of through example. I know that I do a lot of things I’d much rather not do — I’m not a paladin, me — because I don’t want to let dad down. Even if it’s things he’d never hear of, or wouldn’t care about if he did.

Like coming out of the political closet when the requirements of keeping in the political closet went from just “Keep your mouth shut” to “you must vocally proclaim pernicious bs that will hurt others.” That was a doozy. But if dad were in that situation and understood what I was being asked to do, that’s what he’d do, so that’s what I had to do too.

It’s uncomfortable, and it certainly isn’t natural to me. I’m not the “yes, they wronged me, but this is their due, and I must help them” I’m the “tooth for a tooth, eye for an eye” and an extra kick to the groin, kind of person. And yet, he looks over my shoulder metaphorically speaking and so– Instead of getting down in the mud and raining vengeance, I — heaven help me — try to do what dad would do. And when I would give the first draft a cursory look and a spell check and send it in, or when I’ve sent in a story and realize it’s not right, even if I know it would be accepted, I remember dad, and I pull back the story and spend three days on a rewrite and send it in. Or I spend three months — glares at Witch’s Daughter — making the it the best I can even though I know most people won’t notice.

I’m not naturally honorable, but I have a man of honor looking over my shoulder.

I think people with real honor, people who keep up that real honor, the standards of civilization, the pride in their work, in the end are the only thing keeping us from flying apart, from breaking down under the incompetence and the cheating of the “smart guys.”

They rarely get the thanks they deserve. They never get the payment or the glory they deserve.

G-d bless them.

Do try to make them proud.