Honor

To me the three most important virtues in life are love, truth, and honor. To me these all go hand in hand. Right now I want to talk about honor and what it means to me.
To a lot of people it would seem, especially in this generation, I feel honor is overlooked. I can only speak about America as this is where I have experience, so please understand I'm not rationalizing the whole world. This is just my view. To me the concept of honor is essential. It's one of my great interests. I like stories of old times of Knighthood or Samurai honor and often read about these philosophies.
I think a lot of people live their lives day to day and everyone has morals, but sometimes I think that they let them go at times due to personal feelings and selfishness. I live my life by a code. This to me is honor, a set of rules set out for yourself that you follow, even if its not exactly what you want. To follow your code and carry yourself with dignity to me is the epitaph of honor.
So what is my code? I don't really want to turn this into some 3 year long post, so I'll keep things short and around the topic which inspired me to write this blog, which is honor within friendship.
To me a friendship is one of the most sacred bonds. The people whom you associate yourself with says a lot about you as a person. These people are involved in many of your actions, they add to your character, they stand behind you and they share your burdens. To be a friend, you must also do these things.
So what to me is honor within friendship? It is the way you treat your friends and the way you allow others to treat your friends. First rule of friendship is loyalty. If someone is your friend, then you must stick behind them. If they are doing something foolish, they are your friend, and it is your job to show them their folly. If they do not listen to you, or they waste your advice and friendship, they are not a true friend and do not value or deserve your time and opinion. I have stood behind friends when I knew they were wrong, sometimes people need to learn for themselves, and it is our job as friends to show them they were wrong and help them become stronger people.
But what if your friend already knows they are doing the wrong thing, and even after you give them advice, they still ignore it. Is this person a good friend to have? Somehow I think not. Everyone is capable of mistakes, but if a person knowingly is putting himself in the wrong, it is dishonorable to stand behind them and be part of it. In these situations, I let my stance be known and step back.
The tricky part of the situation is that those whom you associate with add or negate your honor, so it is important to make sure your friends follow the same or similar codes as yourself.
My next code of conduct regarding friendship is considering relationships. Out of respect for my friends, I will not even think of dating someone that they have. It is possible that I'm missing out on some love, but to me friendship is more important. If something happens between yourself and a friends lover, even if your friend says its ok, it could create rifts in either your friendship or your relationship. It is a lose lose situation.
My next rule involves how you let others talk of your friends. I will not listen to someone talk trash about my friends in my presence. This can become tricky when both sides are friends, but the honorable solution is simple. You have one of two choices. You can tell the person that because of your friendship you do not wish to be involved in the quarrel. The second would be to listen to both sides of the story and try to mediate the problem, because most likely it is a misunderstanding. But one should never play both sides of the fence. You should not repeat things back and forth because it will only make the problem worse. In the end, you could lose both friends because they know you are not trustworthy. Another lesson on top of this is that you should not put your friends in the middle of your quarrels if you know that you would be pressing them to choose sides. It's okay to vent frustrations, but let it be known in advance.
Okay, this is all I'm going to write for now, but I want to touch up on these topics sometime later. I think if everyone followed a code and treated each other by that code, that the world would be a better place. Of course like my father always says, "Opinions are like assholes, everybody's got one."

Peace
Halfstep

JMU Circles 07

To think how fast time goes by. I remember this time last year was my first big competition. I entered circles last year with a few friends, and I really sucked it up haha. I've been having a lot of thoughts about how little I've progressed lately, but when I think back one year ago, and how I performed last weekend at the same jam, the progress is pretty nuts. CAB crew rep'd that jam hard. We did end up entering the 4on4's, but we didn't make it to the top 8. We didn't prepare much as a unit, so I wasn't so surprised. There were a lot of good crews there. We held down the cyphers though. I was battling everyone. I was calling out people a lot better than me. I probably got smoked a lot, but w/e. You've gotta try the impossible if you ever expect to get better. My most memorable battle was vs Lancealot from Repstyles. We just happened to go out in the circle at the same time and he copped me some attitude, so I battled with him. It was pretty fun. All out of respect tho, no beefs!

I got to meet some cool people too. Over the weekend I got to meet a lot of Hidden Characters crew and they were really cool. I also got to meet one of the OG's, Poe One, who is amazingly cool. I also got to see machine, who is a complete beast. And I was honored that he had heard of Ironman haha.

The ride to JMU was so funny. Vince and Russ are too crazy. We were listening to whatever crappy music Alem was playing and just making fun of it. They were playing some system of a down and we started singing deathmetal songs about russ's lunchables.

All in all it was a really tiring weekend, but it was a really good time. I think it was good for me to get out of DC for a weekend and just chill with my crew. I had a great time and can't wait till next year's. Hopefully I can make CAB train hard as a unit so we can show those fools what's up. And as for me its time to get back to training.

Oh ya, contrats to Beatwhacks for taking the 4on4's.

Peace
Halstep