Morning!
Today’s post comes from that most magnificent of insightful individuals, the secret cartoonist behind www.Nicky510.com . If you’re not on his mailing list yet, you have not a clue as to what you’re missing – you can sign up for free and receive goodies like the below.
And I quote:
I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.
George Washington
I’ve written of George before and likely will be doing so again. The more one reads of him the more one realizes just how amazingly lucky this country was to have found him.
Notice that he doesn’t say "I’m an honest guy." That this is true is inherent in his sentence construction. And he isn’t saying that he’s clearly going to be honest now and forever. His first utterance is "I hope." He hopes that he shall be strong enough and virtuous enough to continue (here’s where it’s clear that he considers himself to, in fact, be honest at that point in time) to be an honest man.
George realizes that maintaining this condition isn’t easy – far from it in fact. Every day events conspire to work against that goal. It’s so much easier to stray from the path of honesty than to hold to it, especially as doing so quite often comes at an price that’s immediately obvious and clear.
What’s less obvious is what’s lost when one turns away from honesty.
It’s a truism that once a person is known to be dishonest, even just a little, the assumption of dishonesty remains in all future actions. Is he telling the truth? Maybe and maybe not. However, for the honest man, there are no such doubts. If you’ve always been honest the assumption is that you say what you mean.
That’s quite a powerful weapon to have in one’s arsenal.
George realized it and that realization served as a reminder and goad whenever temptation raised its head. Once you’ve spent a lifetime building up your reputation, it makes but little sense to toss it all away for a short term gain.
Just imagine if today’s politicians held George’s views and we the voters could be confident that they meant what they said. Politics would sure look a lot different, wouldn’t it?
It certainly would indeed.
What do YOU think?
Enjoy,
Barbara Ling
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