Opinion/Editorial
CORE OF HONOR
“I’m just a soul whose intentions are good, oh Lord, please don’t let me be understood.” Great song lyrics and great expression of personal intent. The road to hell is paved with good intentions is another expression, except totally false. The road to hell is paved with bad intentions, but then…who’s doing the valuation or measuring of the intentions? Studying someone’s background isn’t accurate in figuring out whether they have developed a core of honor…as many times it takes a series of mistakes to establish and grow that sense of honor. Like combat decorations, those intentions laid down in print or on the Internet, are the supposed observations and conclusions of others…which means they don’t have. to be accurate or true.
Many of us out here, no matter the age or circumstance, are trying to get better all the time, and developing a sense of honor means that we are not trying to do that at the expense of others. The news comes to everyone through the different communications mediums owned and operated by others and much of what it reports has little to do with truth. Most of those people hired to talk the news, and few report it from the field these days, are millionaires. They are entertainers painted up to look like reporters and those who have seen or known the truth they are telling, like Anderson Cooper or David Muir. They read the ‘news’ as it is written for them by other people the public never gets to see or know. Like the speechwriters who write the speeches of the powerful. So, take heart, those few who are reading this article…there’s still time to, no matter one’s age, get started at becoming an honorable man or woman. Never forget, however, that only you can gauge the development of that core of honor you carefully create, nurture, and grow. Go forth and do good things, dropping away those things that are said about you unless those things support the honor you find evident inside your inner core.
The first true mass media communications were religiously based when certain religious leaders figured out that priests and preachers could reach hundreds of people at a time by containing them in chambers called churches and speaking out to them from high-mounted lecterns. Coming all the way forward, the public today is reached in the millions by platforms on the Internet called social sites and also by transmissions through television. Back then the messages delivered were supposed to be religious in nature, but the leaders soon figured out that the masses could be influenced in their future behavior by making their ‘sermons’ about what the people should go forth and do in almost every area of their lives. That has not changed, only the messages have changed. To encourage the people reading this article not to be affected by this very professionally made and powerful message is fruitless and very likely futile.
But, pulling back from these instructions constantly being transmitted about what to do and believe I can advise that centering back inside oneself, a place where the truth is much more accurate and truly applicable is vital to not falling into the depressive cycle these external forces use to control, along with the inducing of fear, of course. Having an inner core of honor first requires an understanding of what the word means. Honor, as I use the term here, means to search, discover, and implement a feeling of what’s right for every situation and for the countenance of human life itself. Life experience plays a significant role in coming to a place where the ‘installation’ of this recognition, feeling, and understanding of what’s really at the center of ourselves (if we choose to put it there) can be accomplished and then constantly improved upon. Through or tolerating any circumstance in life can have bliss as its very foundation only so long as one becomes satisfied that one’s core of honor is being maintained and applied to every decision about anything and everything.
