Chivalry, to use the phrase one more time, is not dead. The white linen covering her face and the pale skin showing the numbness of her position would make one think otherwise. Listen in closely and you might hear her heave and wheeze for air ever so slightly and constantly. These gasps are exhaustive and deep convulsions at what once was paramount and sacred. Her eyes flutter, fingers clench, and soul quakes at the hatred that can so easily take her place. Lack of action and initiative can be the greatest enemies to her passion. Keeping honor or chivalry suppressed in the burial clothes of apathy causes the negative ripples and black vibrations to travel though the human chain. Dignity is gone, shame is plentiful, and integrity pulverized when she is suffocated.

Upholding honor will mean nothing to us if we have nothing to put at risk. If we have already lost or sold out to the lowest bid and been pleased with an utterly tasteless scenario, gone and forsaken all we lay claim to love, or even just lied to please the masses then I propose there is still a way. That way is different for all of us but is just as dusty, bitter, and solitary now as it was for those who already traveled it. Getting even one ‘peasant-folk’ to realize that chivalry breathes (if only it ends up being myself) would fulfill my purpose.

To make it clear, I am talking about honor or chivalry in the utmost, complete and classical form. Untouchable as she is, many have sworn by her, others kept silence by her—often with their lives—and others let her slip through their fingers with some shameful deed or folly. The evasiveness and intangibility of Chivalry comes in the notion that to have her one must constantly look for her.

So what of it fellow polished men and women? Are we still at the auction of pride and honor and willing to sell our antiquities of individuality to that lowest bidder?