“Respect is what you give to others. Honor is what you give to yourself” – Being Caballero
Respect is for others, but it is also for yourself. Honor is respecting yourself; showing yourself respect by living your values. Honor is also how we respect those who gave us what we have – life. We respect the ancestors by living with honor.
Honor can be very subjective and can be defined in so many ways. Not everyone will see honor in my way, nor will I see honor is the same way as others. Honor is an internally regulated code of behavior. We are judged by the accepted code the culture or society that we live in. Reputation is how those around us measure their opinion of our honor. We have little control of our reputation; we can only control how we live. If we live with honor our reputation should take care of itself.
That said, if my reputation is not something I am proud of I need to step back and re-access my behavior. Do I live my honor code? Are my values inline with societal values? Are societal values worthy of my adopting? If the societal values I am being judged by are not worthy of my adopting, then I need to understand this and live my truth. I do not need to worry about those values. If the values I am judged by are worthy and I am not proud of my reputation in that culture there are three reasons; three things that I can look at.
- I am not living or behaving honorably
- Someone is intentionally trying to harm my reputation
- I am using the incorrect metric to measure my honor
There is little I can do about someone intentionally trying to harm my reputation. I can not control what they do. I can only live my truth and behave with honor. If my reputation is not repaired or sustained by my living my truth, then I am likely not living within the correct culture. That is something I can control. I can change the culture I am living in. I can do this by either influencing a change in the surrounding culture or removing myself to a place where the culture is more in line with my truth.
Grithstead 