Loyalty

Loyalty in a very abstract concept, and yet it pervades so much of our lives. Loyalty to friends, family, boyfriends, girlfriends, country, and maybe even God. Some loyalties are considered more important than others, like the loyalty to family. In our culture, it seems as if loyalty is something that is drilled into our bones, the highest of highest of cardinal virtues. you can be who you want, do whatever fucked up things you want, and as long as you did it out of some sort of sense of loyalty, all can be forgiven. As it should. But is that really what I think or what our society has taught me to think? Maybe it's neither. Perhaps the reason we hold loyalty so high is that it transcends culture and society. Loyalty is one of the few things treasured amongst all world cultures, one of the few things that binds together humanity. To be loyal is to be human, and maybe because we have no way to fight that urge we put it on a pedestal, even when it destroys us. Maybe it has to destroy us. Isn't that the truest test of loyalty, to be completely and utterly broken because of your loyalty to another? And isn't it beautiful? Because at the core of it, loyalty isn't futile. It's love enacted, love as an action, love as a tangible effect.

-EB