I feel careful about
approaching this topic. I come to integrity because as I am getting older I
find that it is growing more and more important to me. Therefore, I should be
able to define it, but it is much more elusive to me too. Integrity seems like
pornography to me. By that, I mean, a supreme court justice once said, when he
felt compelled to try and define pornography, “I can’t define it, but I know it
when I see it.” Integrity too, seems like something one can notice sooner than
one can define it. I’m not going
to write so much about what it is, because honestly I’m not sure I know, but I
am going to try to write about the benefit of its presence.
I notice who touches me.
They tend to have it. When it is missing, and/or underdeveloped, I tend to take
everything that person says, even if I like it, and agree, with a grain of
salt. It’s not quite that I don’t trust them. Even meaning well, I’m not going
to rely on them. Integrity is, for me, some kind of navigational device. It’s a
funny one. I don’t have a sense, and can only rely on its presence, when I’ve
developed it inside myself. My ability to recognize it, in others, depends upon
the work I do inside myself to grow and develop it.
I’m not defining what it is,
partly out of reverence for it. Integrity, seems to me, to be somewhat
mysterious. I can feel it, it is like a kind of presence, a core of some kind,
a reassuring solidity, which tells me somebody is home. I like knowing that
spending time here, with this person, is going to be a good investment of my
precious life-energy.
I also like knowing that
even when I lose my balance, which is fairly often, I have enough ballast
inside, to keep me from permanently being unbalanced. My integrity saves me
from damaging falls, and helps me orient towards the future. This is a great
utility, but a hard-earned one. It is important, noticeable, in its presence or
absence, it is essential to
aspirations of real achievement, and largely untalked about. Integrity, I guess
because it is hard to define, and is so mysterious, doesn’t get the attention
it deserves.
No matter how true that last
assertion is, integrity is growing like a good cancer, in my aging internal
landscape. Life seems to want me to have integrity. As I age, I’ve grown more aware of my approaching death, and
of a desire to live really fully now. Integrity seems to have more to do with
the latter. Somehow, the quality and value of my life seems to revolve around
whether I am living truly or not. Integrity has to do with me having everything
lined up. Its not enough that I have values (like it used to be), now I have to
be living them out.
I guess the aging piece is
important here. Somehow, as I’ve
grown older, it has become increasingly important to me, to look at my own
life, and to bring things into alignment. Values are becoming actions.
Relationships are becoming other limbs. Life is becoming miraculous on a more
and more detailed level. There is a sense of continuity that calls for a more
refined sense of alignment, if you will, integrity.
I had to begin learning
about living with some kind of integrity long before I could actually do it.
That has been hard. It still is. Refining what I’ve learned about myself, about
the incredible difficulty of being human, about the possibility of compassion,
keeps me ever vigilant, awake to the whole dance, adjusting to the rhythms of
change. My sense of integrity always seems to be suffering from a kind of
jet-lag, behind the moment’s need, but there enough to know and be grateful for
the lesson of the moment.
Developing something that
keeps me in the game hasn’t come easy. The difficulty is like initiatory
ordeals. I have scars to show for it, but those scars serve to remind me, that
my presence in the game isn’t an accident. I have worked hard to be capable of
failing so thoroughly, and being able to learn so well from these miserable but
gallant attempts. Gaining ballast is increasingly important to me now.
Integrity, no matter how it is defined, allows me to persist, to keep going,
and to keep myself oriented toward the mysterious source of being.
I want to die, and believe
myself capable of going toward the light. I think I would be too afraid of the
light, of encountering the truth of my being, if I haven’t placed enough
emphasis upon living integrously. Integrity, that mysterious navigational tool,
is my hope of becoming fully what I am capable of being. It hurts trying to
live up to it, and it hurts even more living without it.
Integrity baffles me, just
as it releases me. I am more of what Life intended me to be, because I am so
caught up in trying to live fully. Integrity is a gift that requires constant
play.
