Men of Honor

     My niece and I were having the "If you could live in another time...?" discussion last week.  I don't have a specific time picked out, but I think I would like to live in a time when I would be called "My lady".  It sounds noble.  Not that I want to be a queen, just someone with a smattering of influence.  I don't feel too snobbish about it, I doubt anyone dreams of being a common peon in an age when life was hard and people died young. However, I am very glad to live in this time.  Having cooked for an overnight, pioneer field trip I have decided hot running water is the greatest invention of the 20th century.  Every time I turned around I needed hot running water.  And how are you supposed to wash the pan you are heating the water in?  I would never have been able to turn around in the 19th century.
     I realize, though, that most women called "my lady" had few choices about their lives.  You might be married off to a stranger as part of a political, financial, even geographical alliance, an addendum to a deal drawn up between  men who have no interest in your happiness.  Besides, if I had lived in a era before braces, I would have needed a wealthy father to provide sufficient dowry to bribe someone to marry me.  To paraphrase--my face would be writing checks my personality couldn't cash.  It's better to stay right here in a land with health care, hot showers and lattes.
     But there is something else I miss, something I have read about in books, a time when men valued a sense of honor as much as their lives.  There are still honorable men, ironically, few of them are among those addressed as "your honor"; but the idea of honor, doing right simply because it is right, largely disappeared from our culture shortly after the concept of truth.  If there is no objective standard of right and wrong, neither gentlemen nor thieves are obligated to do more than their follow their conscience, often at a great distance.  There was a time when men knew that being a man required denying his natural impulses and following a higher standard.  Not all did, of course, but those who did were admired and respected.  Imagine a reality TV program about honorable men and women.  They would never make the cut.  Too boring.
     I am privileged to be the lady of an honorable man (my husband has always called me lady, maybe that's where I got the idea) and our children have grown into people of honor, but I wish there were not so many voices out there saying integrity doesn't matter.  It is hard to obey the biblical commands to give honor to God, parents, kings etc. if we do not have it.  The respect and esteem of a dishonorable person is an insult rather than a compliment.  If I could live in another time, I would choose a time when kings were still honored and honor was still king.