“What is honored in a country will be cultivated there.” —Plato
What does honor mean to you? The dictionary has a long list of definitions that include respect, integrity, esteem, and high regard. Put another way, we might ask, what’s your bottom line? Where are you not willing to compromise? And what are you cultivating?
Marriage vows often mention honoring your partner, and the Ten Commandments say we should honor our parents, but few of us really consider what that entails.
It needn’t be complicated. When we smile at someone on the street, hold the door for the next person, pay it forward at the coffee shop, take time to spend with our spouse, listen to a child tell us about his day at school, or pick up the phone to touch base with a friend or family member, we are honoring them.
When we choose not to eat junk food or put harmful substances in our bodies, to get enough rest, to take a break, to not join in the gossip going on around us, we are honoring ourselves.
But Plato is talking about a country. Maybe we should ask what America is cultivating before we wail about how the nation is coming apart. From where I sit it seems that America cultivates sports, sex, entertainment, money, and power, so it must be pretty plain to other nations what we honor. It’s been said that a look at your checkbook will reveal what your priorities are. If that look makes you uncomfortable then you have some work to do.
If you disagree with what is taught in schools do you teach your kids about your personal values at home? If you appreciate what medical workers, local officials, law enforcement folks, teachers, and volunteers in your community do, have you told them? Or do you participate in trash talk on social media, and listen to people rant and denigrate one another, or our leaders? Do you support local entities that honor our less fortunate, or just assume someone else will? Are your priorities to have a fancy home, new car, and prestigious job, or to treat co-workers, family, and the people you meet daily, with kindness and respect?
It all comes back to the individual, doesn’t it? A country is made up of people and will be known by the actions of those people. It’s written somewhere (go look it up, and not on Google) that as we sow, so shall we reap. And after we sow, we cultivate, to help the seeds prosper.
Eliza Blue wrote recently, in Cattle Business Weekly, about the difference between seeking joy, and seeing joy. We often fall into the trap of chasing joy through things we acquire, people we run with, or the awards we are given. But joy is all around us, all the time, in little things that we seldom notice. Maybe honoring starts when we take time to cherish those joys and cultivate the seeds.