September 10
Where all gave way, Cato did not. He would rather fall upright than endure bowed — and he stayed true to himself when the Republic had long been lost.
Lives: Cato the Younger (freely rendered)
Listening mode
Where all gave way, Cato did not. He would rather fall upright than endure bowed — and he stayed true to himself when the Republic had long been lost.
Sometimes you hold on to something after it can no longer achieve anything. The vote is over, the others have come to terms with it, and your no no longer changes the result. Still, you don't take it back.
Whether that is loyalty or defiance is hard to tell from the inside. Both feel like sincerity, both cost something, and with every day you stick to it, both become harder to give up. If you gave in, you wouldn't only have to change your mind. You would also have to reassess, after the fact, what you have already paid for it.
One clue might lie in whether you could still state your reason without mentioning the others. If your stance consists mainly in not having given in, then by now it depends on those who did. It needs their backing down just to remain visible at all.
If, on the other hand, the reason stands on its own, even defeat changes nothing about it. It is now as right or as wrong as it was before. Only then you are alone with it, even if the others are still sitting in the same room.
