VIRTUTE NON VERBIS

I keep coming to this agonizing dilemma within my head. On the one hand, I live with this idea that the virtues I hold within me are simply not there as a matter of course. That they are within me because I hold them important, and expect myself to defend them by acting in a way that proves to myself and others that they are worth the effort. Qualities like reliable truth, and honesty, or transparency of intent. Virtues of trust and compassion, of humility, and the necessity of dignity and respect... for those who deserve it. And on the other hand, I am constantly assailed by the notion that these things aren't of much use to people, or not admired, if it can be more easily PERCEIVED in greater degree in someone else by doing nothing. It makes a person feel as though the quick fix stock answers are of more weight if they can be sold as more than they are worth by doing nothing, than what I am willing to offer freely but not afforded the ability. Why should someone seek the truth through adversity when the status quo, pale and unrealized, is made to look so much better simply with the promise of it?
Virtues and qualities of worth are abstract concepts that are very difficult to quantify in a world that has become so accustomed to satisfying itself with physical trappings that mask internal failings. They spend BILLIONS on cosmetics and clothing to look better than we think they do, and then spend billions MORE looking to pharmaceuticals and therapists to rationalize why they aren't feeling as good on the inside as they should for what they paid for and painted over on the outside. They strive and cling to trophies and accolades that, for the most part, are only offered by compliance to someone Else's wants. Positions and mantles of worth are brief and fleeting, and sell everything that they have of themselves trying to live up to a notion of self worth by begging it from people who couldn't care less whether they had them in the first place.
Above everything else, they have become more and more incapable of living within the situations that they have made for themselves. It was sold out, piece meal, for one thing or another, and when it was realized what it was that was sacrificed, desperately attempted to make themselves feel more worthy by at least convincing themselves that they are still virtuous or possess the qualities that make us better. And that's where we all fail.
We want the titles of virtue and to have people perceive that we have these abstract qualities, but we do so very little in the way of actually achieving them. Even those who do possess them are sometimes very quick to offer them up as payment to those who do not simply because it is a short term fix to the overwhelming situational needs of the moment. Some very beautiful people are sacrificing their own virtues to be eaten alive by charming jackals. Nothing more useful than feeling like less of a person than by being bitten in the hand when you feed it.
Most of this comes from a very simple misunderstanding of what it is that defines noble virtues and qualities. It is not simply enough to want them. it has to be within every person to not only understand them, but strive to hold them important enough in themselves. Virtues and qualities need to be EXPECTED of others, and have them feel the need for others to see them exemplified within themselves. We need a world that needs to embrace those virtues, but also to become intolerant of those who simply can not or will not offer them to others. If we do not, then we set a precedence for repeated behavior that allows the empty words to hold more weight than the act of doing them.
While it is one thing to hoist the banner of 'virtue" and proclaim oneself worthy of carrying it as an important standard, it is a wholly different thing, and far more noble, to stand beneath the pennant and fight for it. There is a very famous engraving of Joan Of Arc holding the flag of France in her left hand, and a sword in her right. Come to think of it, almost every painting of battle involves two things. The banner, and the weapon. They are intrinsic to the understanding that every ideal needs to be defended, and done so by its worth to those who fight for it. Anyone can hold the guidon and drape themselves in a false sense of patriotism , but it is not the flag that assures protection. It is the sword that is wielded in defense of that which gives credence to the banner. Virtute Non Verbis. Deeds. Not words.
So many people in the world have becoming nauseatingly content with themselves to believe that in order to be seen as virtuous by others that all they need do is be cognizant of the definitions, regardless of whether they can or will do what is necessary to uphold them. Instead, they rely on the needs of others to have, furling in their faces like a satin veil, the eyewash and subterfuge that hides the plain fact that they are now unable to see that the virtues are not being defended by the sword at all. It is a death shroud with the hoist of a lifetime. Talk is cheap, and offers nary a whisper of worth.
Were it not bad enough that so many have decided it is of more use to themselves to cloak their cowering frames behind the flag of virtues and qualities they simply do not possess, it is a far worse thing to rally behind those who do. As though the followers of the grandest of deceptions have become legions of one-armed soldiers who ally them selves with a weaponless hand, and shamble rather than march shoulder to shoulder, on feet of clay.
For the love of God, and for the defense of the banner you clutch to, STAND UP!
Do not allow those who would benefit from your ignorance of the truth or have you endure to live lower than the standard to which you wish to be. Do not let a 'paper tiger' succeed and have you sacrifice out of confusion what they sold of themselves all the while making you feel like it was your decision.
Hold onto the nobility of your pennants with one hand, but pick up the sword and DEFEND what you decry as worthy. Allow the fringes to brush your face, but not so close as to blind you to the battlefield in front. There may be clay on your feet, but they are feet nonetheless, and the more you march, the more the clay falls beneath your feet to be trod upon by more determined advance.
It is a war.
It is a war against the belief that weak and feeble mewlings of the vainglorious are enough to supplant the true worth of a banner of such necessary stature. It is against the belief that it is enough to simply talk the talk, without walking the walk. If it is worth it to hoist above your head, it is worth it to wield the sword as well. And if it is not, then drop it to the earth and let it be trampled for what it is. Be done with it. Hope instead that it will be rended from its seams and used to staunch the bloody wounds suffered by the victims of frail ignorance. Hold no remorse in your heart for that which you had no need of proof for in deed, and, instead, satisfied yourself with the paltry belief that mere words could irradiate the need for action. If you are to be cut down, then do so unfettered with that cloying immobility of wet cloth. Pleading for mercy in the mud is done much better with two hands anyway.