Sometimes loyalty is not a word.
Sometimes it is a silence that gets stuck in the throat.
It is a reproach that sometimes brings tears to your eyes at the mention of his name, but you cannot say it out loud.
It is difficult to talk about loyalty today. Because loyalty lives most in the tongues of the hurt. And most of all in the hearts of the forgotten...
We all have a “we set out together” sentence in our lives. People we say we sat at the same table, dreamed the same dream, paid the same price... But as time passes, the tables get bigger, the seats multiply, the power expands. At that point, loyalty becomes a burden. It turns into a past we don't want to remember, a labor we want to ignore.
But loyalty begins with remembering.
By remembering who you walked with, where you came from, what pain you went through to reach today...
In this country, the sense of loyalty has been kneaded mostly in pain. In dungeons, at gravesides, in courtrooms... It has remained hidden in a mother's lament that does not subside even after years, in a father's silent gaze at the ground, in a brother's unfinished sentence. In this land, we learned loyalty from those we lost.
Today we are asked to forget.
The past says “don't tamper too much”.
They want to “put the pain behind us”.
But no one asks: What about those who are left behind?
Loyalty starts right here.
In taking care of those who are left behind.
Remembering the names of those whose path was left unfinished...
In winning, we must not forget the losers...
In politics, loyalty is the most quickly abandoned virtue. Because loyalty disturbs comfort. It complicates calculations. It gets in the way of those who say “we need to get on with our work”. That is why loyalty is often belittled as “sentimentality”. But the real callousness is to deny that you are walking together.
The media is no different.
Those who once called for “freedom” taking refuge in silence today, those who once called for “truth” turning a blind eye today... These are all different faces of disloyalty. Because journalism also requires loyalty. Loyalty to the reader, to the truth, to the honor of the profession...
Loyalty is sometimes a phone call.
Sometimes it's to mention your name.
Sometimes it means “you are not alone”.
And sometimes, when everyone else is silent, to keep remembering.
Let's face it:
Being loyal makes you tired. It leaves you alone. It takes its toll. But it does not silence your conscience when you put your head on the pillow at night. Because loyalty is a debt one owes to oneself.
That is why loyalty is still precious.
It is still resistance.
It is still morality.
At a time when forgetting is so encouraged, remembering is an objection.
It is a stance to turn and look where everyone else turns away.
And we, despite all our fatigue, will not stop saying this:
Man shrinks the day he loses his loyalty.
Society rots the day it loses its loyalty.
Loyalty is not a virtue of the past, but the last reminder of how to remain human today.