Nobility

I grew up watching noble things on a 13" black and white television. I didn't see them too often anywhere else, but I saw them in that box. I watched a lot of television growing up, particularly shows about honorable people fighting great odds, helping others. I loved older movies where right was right and wrong wasn't, and it was clear who understood and respected the difference. True to form, I particularly admired the selfless sacrifice, the hero that walked away with a hole in his heart, doomed to a life of penance for someone else's sins. Since then I have discovered that I have a fair deal of noble sentiments, that I can at times act nobly, and that I had no decent idea of the price one pays to be noble. No decent idea.
Lately, I am dealing with some serious challenges to my self-professed sense of nobility and dignity. I don't think I am faring too well though. It is one thing to think abstractly about sacrifice and suffering, it is another to invite it, court it, and live with it. As I write this, I have in mind three assaults on my nobility that I am currently battling, and I don't think I am winning. For the past two years, I have dealt with an affront to my character that might be spilling out of its banks. I am facing difficult situations at work, and I am not always taking the high road. And finally, I have walked away from a friend (not my idea)with no questions, no resolution, leaving just with the emptiness and pain of absence. I want to emerge from these trials with the knowledge that I handled them better, that I dealt with them with dignity. It's just that I am realizing what I have to do to foot the bill. Those long dead heroes don't look as attractive as they once did, they simply look worn, tired, and beaten.
My three tests probe three different aspects of my intended nobility: one demands that I do nothing, and simply buck up as the arrows fly, arrows people who don't know me or the circumstances, feel need to hit their mark. The second demands that I resist actions that might be cathartic or senselessly fun, check my ego, and perform with more diligence than might be embedded in the culture I try to navigate. The third demands that I leave a situation where I had little support, leave the person I had relied on for so much strength, and walk away towards nothing at all, no one to share my loss, no one to understand.
I will reorient myself and press on. I will embrace the embarrassment and shame, and I will not feel sorry for myself. But I will never, ever again romanticize a noble life, nor will I feel some sort of karmic affirmation. I will most likely be a lonely man with a tarnished name, better at my job, with a hole in my heart permeating my soul. So I am not Bogart or Tristan for that matter, but I am losing weight.
*This post is not intended to be melodramatic, nor melancholic. I am just trying to capture and express that which is tearing at the inside of my chest right now, giving some form and substance to the emptiness.