“A lot of people are rubbish on the loyalty front. I don’t get it.” Our speaker was my good friend of many years, name of Tadmuffin Millhouse. Tadmuffin. How on earth do you not like someone named Tadmuffin Millhouse, I ask you? The man sounds like a cottage!

We were sitting side by side on an old rock wall flanked by woods on one side and a meadow on the other. We faced the meadow. The movement of a meadow when the breeze has its way is magic to behold – beauty in perpetual motion. Tadmuffin’s chest had puffed up with happy pride when out of the blue I asked him for his views on the importance of loyalty. 

“Too often the script is essentially the same. I’ll hear a woman or man say, “I’m loyal to my family and friends. To all my loved ones,” and then, more times than I’d like to think about, they jump ship the moment any, say, actual real-life loyalty be required.” 

And then, Tadmuffin being Tadmuffin, told me his loyalty. 

“Loyalty comes from our better angels. Spiritual nausea and pain is what disloyalty feels like, experiencing it, or inflicting it. Disloyalty is injustice. Moral injustice. Hell, I’d be loyal to that pleasant looking man walking across the street over there. I can see his wife. They’re laughing. I’d be loyal to her as well. I love being loyal to others. I can’t do anything about lip-service loyalty. Loyalty is an honor to have in one’s marrow. It’s not always easy, and it’s not always fear free, but it is honorable life.”