The Honour Vacuum In The Modern World
First published on July 8, 2020
I was sitting with my coach late last year. There was a moment of silence, and she asked: 'Why is this so important?'
I paused and waited. Wanting a better answer, but knowing that this was the truth. And, really, knowing that there is no better answer.
'Because it's the right thing to do.'
'I knew you were going to say that,' she said.
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Three years ago, in a beautiful exercise tapping into our inner wisdom at one of Rich Litvin's Intensives, a 'purpose' emerged from me. Live a life of courage, honour, vulnerability and truth, and inspire others to do the same.
Of those four values, honour is the one I speak about the least. Almost never, in fact. Whilst courage, vulnerability and truth are part of my work on a regular basis, are commitments that I ask every member of my group programmes to sign up to, this, right now, may be the first time I have ever mentioned honour in my work.
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I interviewed Toku McCree, recently, for a future episode of The Coach's Journey Podcast. Among many beautiful aspects of the conversation, we spoke about sales. But not just any sales, sales with honour. That's what counts. That's what takes us to the work that matters the most. That's where what we are doing may look like the sleazy sales that we often think about but it feels completely different.
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It strikes me that there may be an honour vacuum in the modern world. We don't talk about it - whilst courage, vulnerability and honesty (or truth) are things we can talk about, things it has even become fashionable for leaders to grow, honour is different. Doing something because it's the right thing to do isn't fashionable. It isn't spoken about. What does it even mean?
We see it in leaders (not all leaders), unwilling to do the right thing because it's the right thing to do.
We see it in activists (not all activists), unwilling to not do things which aren't the right thing to do.
We see it in ourselves, where we don't even honour ourselves, don't even keep our word or do the right thing for us.
Another future podcast guest, Chris Joseph, spoke beautifully in our interview about how a turning point for him was realising that he had to live up to the person he wanted his children to be.
Well, that's on all of us, not just those with children. To be the resolution, to be the change, to be, today, what the world needs of tomorrow needs.
But when a concept isn't fashionable, when we aren't familiar with it, then we need to really understand it. We have almost lost, particularly in a secular, modern world, a sense of what right and wrong means, what it is, what it feels like. We have lost the boundaries that we won't cross because of our honour. We have lost the lines in the sand that we need to hold.
We see this in the way that language is used, in the way people manipulate others for 'good ends', in the lengths people will go to to make things better whilst, at the same time, making them worse. We see it in the integrity gaps and the selfishness. We see it in the numbing and the blindness.
This isn't easy. My conversation with my coach was about something I had been wrestling with for months. In some ways I'm still wrestling with it.
But a sense of right and wrong isn't some old-fashioned ideal that doesn't cut it in the modern world. It's a lost super-power that people will be inspired and enriched by.
Find the people and the places that still have honour. Find those that embody it, in real life or in fiction. Remember the people and the characters that inspire you. And do what they would do. Understand the values you care about. And then practise honour. Every day.