Chapter 5: “Learn to honour”

Dear Child,

Honour is a heroic trait. But unlike the heroes of movies, to be able to fight off monsters and demons does not necessarily mean that the character is honourable. Honour, like forgives, is an abstract quality. It is about time that you learn what abstract attributes are. Abstract qualities are such that they are not corporeal, that means they do not have a solid form. Yet you will notice that some of the principle emotions and behaviours are abstract in nature.

Pain, love, hate, envy, mercy; all are abstract characteristics. Honour is one of these too. You can not touch it, or see it per se, for it is not tangible. But my dear child, you should know that you can actually see honour, not floating in thin air, but as part of some people. It radiates through them and into everything that surrounds them.

In my simple dictionary, honour has been described as such: ‘Your honour is your good reputation, which you take pride in earning and maintaining by behaving morally or justly and by performing as well as you can in any activity that you undertake’.  The second definition is: ‘you call someone man or woman of honour if they are well known for their honesty or integrity’.

So simply put, a man of honour is he who is honest, owns good morals, is just, has integrity and performs at his best. You will notice however, that according to the first definition, honour is a person’s good reputation. This is not achieved in a week or even a couple of months. Honour is built, brick by brick throughout your lifetime. Consider it this way, if honour was to be calculated against a person’s progressing age, a linear steady graph would mean an honourable man, but a wonky graph that pelts down or takes a half-wishful plunge is likely to own a bad reputation.

You will not find a book titled; ‘An honourable life for Dummies’. No. That is because a book can not possibly teach the true essence of this characteristic quality. But I’ll give you a sneak peak of the best way to go about it. And that is; “keep to the path you’ve chosen (a path of goodness), do not linger or meander towards the sidelined darkness, do your best in everything and you will have lived an honourable life.