Practicing loyalty is healthy for society

Acknowledging with gratitude the sacrifices others have made for us helps build strong bonds, honor agreements, and help each other.

Sometimes I have wondered where the feeling of loyalty comes from and if to be really free you don”t have to be loyal to anyone. The answer has not been long in coming to be truly free I have to be loyal to myself and, to be loyal to myself, I have to be as a sign of gratitude for all that has allowed me to live and survive. This attitude is healthy not only for me, but also for those around me.

It seems that loyalty is a human virtue, but the truth is that it is a quality of survival in the animal world and is related to fidelity and gratitude, high standards and the basis of mutual help. Helps to comply with agreements, tacit or explicit.

There are animals such as dogs or horses that carry it in their genetics and in their behavior for group survival. Contact with them sometimes makes us learn that feeling of loyalty as children.

CAN YOU BE LOYAL BY OBLIGATION?

It is said that there are two kinds of loyalty that of those who are loyal at heart and that of those who are when it is not in their interest to be disloyal. The second may seem selfish but it is important to have it.

When you seek to learn a technique or way of life, you may pay for a service but it is also important to know that you are making a commitment to the one who has taught us to survive and that your own health depends on recognizing and feeling this feeling of loyalty.

AN EXAMPLE OF LOYALTY: GRATITUDE TO PARENTS AND FAITHFULNESS TO CHILDREN

Our parents could have lived much more comfortably and freely if they hadn”t had to take care of us.

They fed us, clothed us, and ensured that we received an education, although the most important thing they did was inspire us with the moral foundations that we have had as adults.

Today”s children often forget the sacrifices parents make for them. This break in the cycle of obligation and filial loyalty is the factor that contributes the most to the erosion of the family, the group and society.

But loyalty tends to go from the bottom up, from the small to the powerful. Bert Hellinger explains that the weak tend to be careful and loyal.

This is the case of the simple workers in a company, the common soldiers in an army or the faithful people of a church. They are the humble people who stand up for their superiors, the sheep who follow the shepherd to the slaughterhouse, the victims who pay the bill.

That is why it is also common to find patient children with the defects of their parents, who do what they did not plan or did not dare, or who carry guilt that is not their own.

A son will not be able to return the gift of life to his parents, but he is the way for it to continue. It is convenient to recognize the great debt that is contracted with the parents, but without letting it condition our path to the point that we stop recognizing it as our own.