Being honorable

He was molded by his mother's teachings to be an upstanding, honorable man. “Be the change,” she would whisper, her eyes holding a thousand untold stories of suffering.

Then, the honorable man met his wife’s father, who, adhering to tradition, offered a dowry far beyond his middling means.

The temptation gnawed at the honorable man, and in a moment of weakness, he succumbed. He convinced himself that the cycle of greed and societal decay would stop after him. That the dowry would be his secret, a one-time departure from his ironclad principles.

That was a hundred years ago. Now, the honorable man’s great-great-grandson stands at his own wedding, facing the same decision. With the lessons of his forefathers fresh in his mind, he too decides the cycle stops… after him.