Honor, Courage, and Commitment

We have all heard those three words, and many in the Navy have heard them put together, its listed at the end of the Sailors Creed. As a DEP rectuit you even have to memorize what they tell you it means. In the Navy they call it the Core Values. They tell you honor is to be honest, ethical, encouraging, having integrity, Courage is to make decisions that you think is best, meeting specific challenges, and loyalty. They describe commitment as demanding respect, caring for the safty and well being of others, and to exhibit the highest degree of moral character, technical excellence, quality and competence in what we have been trained to do.

So what do these words really mean?

Honor: I belive honor is one of the harder of the three to truely understand. From the begining of time men have been tought to represent thier family with honor, to live a life of honor, and to die with honor. But what is honor? “He has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so.”-Walter Lippmann. Thomas Jefferson came pretty close to describing honor when he said “Nobody can acquire honor by doing what is wrong”. Doing what is right, doing what no one else is willing to do because its too "hard", not just counting physical hardness, but mental hardness. Honor is aquired by doing what is right. By not lying, but telling the truth with respect when its needed. describe honor how you want, but that is my idea on the word.



Courage: Doing something when your scared out of your mind. You cannot be couragous doing something that does not frighten you. That is not courage. Even if it looks like it from a distance and outside party, it is not. Courage is mental. Be strong and couragous. Theres not a lot to say on the subject because its easily summed up. Courage is when your scared, you do it anyways.

Commitment: One of the most important things in life. If you are never commited to anything, then you will never do anything, you will always find yourself quiting when the going gets tough. If something is too hard, you give up. Commitment is staying with something, no matter how bad you just want to give up, go home, and sleep in your nice warm bed. Commitment goes hand in hand with dedication.

So these three words are very simple words, but when you put them together, they create an extroidinary human bieng. I believe the only way you can possibly even come close to all three together is if you have the holy spirit in you. The three would create a man who does what is right, even if it is not popular, does what needs to be done, even if it may cost his life, and one who NEVER gives up. thats what needs to be taught to the military.