My most valued honors were given without a monetary award.
Fair enough. I still feel there's a difference between
an honor and the soccer-trophy attitude of most volunteer honors ceremonies. I've found them to be mostly as described above - an event where
everyone is showered with accolades for their duties, and all tasks professed to be
utterly vital, despite the fact that this attitude is absolutely not put forth at any other time in the year, and most volunteer tasks are wonderful and helpful, but hardly critical. I consider
an honor to be recognition of something which truly stands out from the ordinary.
The 'getting paid' thing was not so much that money is necessary for an award to be meaningful, but simply that if a task is truly vital, the hospital would not be able to risk entrusting it to a population which has zero actual responsibility to follow through. It is a specific rebuttal of that oft-repeated phrase about volunteers, rather than a commentary on what makes an honor meaningful.
I happen to 100% loathe false praise, though, perhaps from growing up in VA (the capitol of fake compliments), so perhaps I was too harsh. My least favorite part of volunteering in a hospital was people overstating how generous or important I was, and it was eventually why I quit (aside from simply wanting to loosen my schedule a bit).
