"gods envy us...they envy us because were mortals, because any moment may be our last...everything s more beautiful because were doomed...you will never be lovelier than you are now...we will never be here again."
-achilles (Troy)
i woke up earlier today and decided not to attend the schools' flag ceremony. with really nothing to do, i watched "Troy." i was amazed and intrigued at how hector, achilles, the people then, valued honor. i cant help but notice how much value they placed on honor to the point of them giving their lives for it. they valued honor so much that it constitutes their dignity and pride. because of such passion and zeal i asked myself "how would one live a life without honor?"
my hope is to be able to value honor and let it define how i live my life. just like hector, i hope i would have the courage to face death and with dignity walk towards it. like achilles, i want to be passionate about it.
when did men start becoming cowards? when did men start valuing survival over honor? what s living if you are to live a life devoid of purpose, meaning, dignity, and integrity?
i often wonder how life must have been for those men and women who live when honor was the measure for greatness, i wonder how they can face the inevitable, death, in its rawness and still manage to stand tall and proud, probabaly shaking inside, yet determined to live a life, the only way they know how - an honorable life.
"even enemies show respect." ah what a life must it have been. you dont have to worry about hypocrites because men lived by a code. no wonder hector, achilles, and the likes have their names engraved in history. their honor and bravery, their pain and suffering, their lives were not a waste. they may have been long gone but they are, even as myths and legends, as great as the sacrifices and code they lived by.
people now dont value honor as much. many are to quick to make alliances and commitments yet in the first signs of inconvinience are willing to betray and turn their backs on what matters most.
what does matter nowadays? i struggle to understand, if not find meaning in all that is around me - infidelity, lack of self-control, too much value for personal rights, depleting etiquette, selfishness, and absence of honor.
i try to keep and live a life, although devoid of mythical or legendary qualities for true greatness, yet much closer to that which i want people to remember me by, a life lived with a code of honor. honor that which elevates a mere mortal, a nobody, and make him great. i dont struggle for greatness or look for means to become one. i merely want to live a life worth remembering. why do we live anyway, if not to be beacons for those that will follow behind us?
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