Irony
Actually, its a pity the elected haven't been more exposed to the concept and reading this book brings back a time when attempting to do the honorable thing was not laughed at or ridiculed in public. The book itself is based largely on letters written between Adams and many, many people, especially his wife, and offers a fascinating glimpse into life during the early years. I'm only about half way through it (its over seven hundred pages) but the concepts of honor, of living a good life, of being a good person and instilling those values in your own children is a huge part of the life exposed here. Apparently Representative Weiner hasn't read it, nor have the majority of his professional equals.
Please note that rather than heap further ridicule upon the exposed weiner, this post is actually aimed at me. See, once long, long ago, I too thought that honor was a valid concept and that doing your best to become a good man was how life should be lived. But I have failed, badly. Not as badly as the weiner perhaps, but certainly bad enough that I can't make fun of him. Okay, not too much fun.
There was a time when I made lists for myself, of things that I wanted to do with my life, of ways I could become a better person, of what I should do every day to further those goals. I never consistently followed my plans, as shortly after I made them I discovered girls and later alcohol, and then I was in college where both were everywhere, and then I was married and one day we had a kid and there were bills to pay and curtains to buy and all those dreams had to take a backseat to reality.
I went though a divorce, changed jobs several times and did what I had to do to get by. Then one day I realized that I no longer had to live paycheck to paycheck and I could start saving a little money and one of the things I did was to buy a camera (and later, an even better one). I've always been the black sheep of the family, but I can state categorically that I have never taken pictures of my .. self, nor have I ever allowed anyone else to, at least not in a similar manner to the esteemed representative. But I also never went back to those lists I'd made forty years earlier. I never achieved the old goals of doing fifty pushups at a time, or running three miles every morning, or living in the mountains and damnit, now I'm almost sixty years old. Time has run out.
In an ideal world you and your significant other can help each other achieve those goals. Figure out what's important to you and what you really want to accomplish during your time here. Write these goals down, as you've been told time and time again, then lay out a plan of how you're going to reach those goals. Refer to your lists weekly or monthly and mark your progress. Its not easy, but John Adams used to read Plutarch and Cicero in the original Latin (I think it was Latin, but have so abandoned my goals that I'm now too lazy to even look it up), so temper your complaints accordingly.
One of the many sayings of recent years states "If you don't know where you're going, you'll never get there". Do what you have to do to achieve your dreams, but avoid losing your self-respect in so doing. Personal honor is a real concept and if tossed aside, you may find that like in the old Oscar Meyer song, you can be a weiner too.
Not that I'd know anything about that.