The Power of Honor

Friday Knight News

Socrates once said, “The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.” Socrates

Honor is one of the first ways we begin to demonstrate courage. By the act of honor we begin to demonstrate to others what we hold dear and admire in ourselves and others. We have our mentors, who can be people we have never even met. They have displayed some aspect in their lives that we admire and so to achieve a measure of greatness that they have displayed we model ourselves after them. Yes, of course, I realize all human beings have their faults. So we must act with discernment then we can choose the pure and refined portions to emulate. That is the difference between idolizing someone and emulating someone.

To truly honor someone we need to make sure that we recognize them for their inspiration and/or other worthwhile contributions. We honor them if we derive a good name and reputation for both them and ourselves from our efforts. Honoring someone is a tribute for the doors they opened, methods that have allowed me to express myself in a clearer manner.

The samurai had three separate categories to evaluate instructors. The first of which was the teacher who had studied in depth with several other master instructors and had added their own personal experience to the teaching. This is the top manner of training, my sensei had always taught me that if he did not produce students who were better than him in some way, he had failed.

Then the second type of teacher was an individual who might not have studied as intensely as the first but had picked up specialized skills that would allow him to excel in certain situations. This type of instruction only works when chance gives you the opportunity to win.

The third type of teacher was one who had memorized the teachings that he had studied and pass them on without adding his own experience or special skills. This type of instruction tends to decline over time. Eventually students of this methodology have nothing but an ornamental shell of an art.

Many times in our effort to find ourselves we practice and train the same techniques from different perspectives. Sometimes we may be changing tempos, ranges, or power from hard to soft or soft to hard. We give a lot of our time to understand the nuances of these elements. The giving of our time is the greatest gift we can give because time is a commodity that we are not able to replenish. That is why it is so important to honor those who have found the shortcuts that save us time. This way we are able to spend our energies more productively with those that we love and care about, while accomplishing the tasks we need to develop to protect them.

I appreciate that men like Socrates, who was before my time, which can be just as vital to my development as the insights of many of the great masters of the martial arts I have trained with in my life. We honor these individuals by improving and applying their insights into our lives. In this way we recognize that their teachings and insights are more than just flowery words to be admired and discarded.

I like being around people that have sharpened me. It may take a pastiche of methodologies to suit us individually, but once we are able to merge these methods through serious introspective training we can reveal the individuality that makes us who we are. This is the greatest act of honoring our mentors by living what they have taught us, and not by merely philosophically debating their ideas.

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