Mychael said,
"Age mattering? We all have our ideals, and while it seems easy in abstract to draw firm lines between right and wrong, it is not such a no-brainer in practice."

An ideal should not be more difficult in practise than in theory, but it often is.
Should difficulty change our ideal? Is this ideal so flexible as to be altered when the going gets tough?
An ideal should not be chucked for convenience. To do so lessens the worth of the ideal.

Try changing 'ideal' in the above paragraph to 'honour' or 'rule'.

What I'm saying is that we must be true to ourselves first. Only then can we be true to others.
That's as close to true advice as I can get. How Mychael is true to his own personal ideal is Mychael's decision. Vague, but Mychael can work it out as per his own ideals.