I wrote a blog yesterday about empathy and intuition, and it apparently struck a responsive chord with many of my readers…Today I want to talk about loyalty, and what it means in the year 2015, a year and a time period when alienation, social isolation and interpersonal relationships are all running into a wall of indifference and too often despair, because when people most need something or somebody that they can truly count on, it’s often not there…

This is where Loyalty as a personal attribute, as a virtue, comes into the picture…If you truly have empathy, and you have learned to trust your intuition, then loyalty is perhaps the most important other component in our busy, hurly burly life….We are constantly madly spinning and careening off of each other in our mad dash to the job, to the store, to the baby sitter, to the gas station, to the post office, to the doctors, all the elements and essentials of activity that comprise our day to day life in the daily world…..Our family life at home should be our refuge, our sanctuary….

Loyalty can not be underestimated as a virtue and a value in our everyday world….Loyalty is all about trust….According to my Google sources, the dictionary definition of loyalty is:

1.The state or quality of being loyal; faithfulness to commitments or obligations.
2. Faithful adherence to a sovereign, government, leader, cause, etc.
3. An example or instance of faithfulness, adherence, or the like:

The origin of the concept of loyalty apparently became popular in the Middle English and Middle French years of 1350-1400…Synonyms for loyalty include: “Fealty, devotion, constancy. Loyalty, allegiance, fidelity all imply a sense of duty or of devoted attachment to something or someone.

Loyalty connotes sentiment and the feeling of devotion that one holds for one’s country, creed, family, friends, etc.

Allegiance applies particularly to a citizen’s duty to his or her country, or, by extension, one’s obligation to support a party, cause, leader, etc. Fidelity implies unwavering devotion and allegiance to a person, principle, etc.”

The problem is that loyalty is loyalty only when there is a possibility of betrayal. As St. Thomas Aquinas put it: omnis determinatio est negatio. To see is to compare. Loyalty is not betrayal. To be loyal is not to betray. If there is no room for the notion of betrayal, if it is meaningless, as it is in the economic view of the world, it makes no sense to speak of loyalty.”

In simpler, more basic terms then, loyalty is all about trust, another very human and often overlooked emotion…If you are loyal to somebody, especially your wife, husband, boy friend or girl friend, and to your family and other friends too, then you would never think to betray them, to be disloyal to them…You can count on them and they can count on you…

You may disagree on certain matters,differ on some issues certainly, but the basic bond of human loyalty cannot be altered, distorted or destroyed except through outright betrayal….In street terms, loyalty means you have their back, and they have yours!

Again referring to my Google sources, “What is it in loyalty, finally, that upholds the community, the sense of “we”? What is it in betrayal that undermines it? The answer is that betrayal undercuts the trust, the faith, the confidence the members of the community have in one another.

As a consequence, all withdraw into their own private selves, they become isolated individuals, and the community is shattered. Only where there is loyalty can there be trust: trust that help will be given in need, trust that one will not be let down, handed over, left behind, exploited. Where there is little or no loyalty, distrust and suspicion reign. – See more at: https://home.isi.org/loyalty-modern-world#sthash.3dpUHjGj.dpuf”

We need to feel this emotion of loyalty, of trust more so in our modern world than ever before…We need to feel it every day, in every way…The world today is a dangerous, uncertain place, fraught with deadly dangers and rife with deceit and betrayal, and to optimize our lives, to be fully functional positive forward thinking individuals, we must learn to trust our friends, our family and our loved ones to be loyal to us, and to return this loyalty 100%……

We must strive to be loyal to our loved ones in our everyday world, we must have the comfort of knowing that when we get home after venturing out into this crazy, violence prone world every day, after putting up with all the murky work intrigues and the drama of other people’s lives we all deal with daily, we must feel a sense of security, a sense of relaxation and trust when we come home at night to be with our family and loved ones…

It is funny, but loyalty, trust and betrayal are all human concepts;they do not exist in the animal world….If your dog or cat trusts, accepts and loves you, they are fiercely loyal to you, and would never think of betrayal…This loyalty lasts a lifetime, and we have a responsibility to our pets to honor their loyalty in return…In this respect animals are more dependably loyal than some people, who are always fence straddling and quick to shift allegiances when an opportune moment arrives…But people like these are not your friends, and should never be awarded your loyalty in the first place…

To sum up, loyalty is indeed a virtue, and it’s major components are trust and affection…The more people that you can trust, that you can “let your guard down with” that you can just be yourself around them, without fear of judgment or rejection that you have in your life, the better, richer, more fulfilling life you will have….Your primary source of loyalty should always be to your loved ones, your spouses and family…If you are loyal to them, and strive to never let them down, they will return the favor and all of our lives will be enriched emotionally…

Remember: “To have a friend, BE a friend!”…..