integrity
Integrity… hmmm…
Sometimes I have integrity. A lot of the times I do not.
I’ve been wanting to have it more but I often abandon whatever values I have for whatever the values are of the room I am standing in. It is a good strategy for social survival; but it is a bad strategy for being able to look yourself in a mirror.
I have a friend who I would categorize as high integrity. Actually, I have a lot of friends who I would categorize as high integrity.
I am writing this today because I feel like I take advantage of my high integrity friends; and maybe it isn’t intentional but I still do it. And I think that is the shadiest part of myself and I hate it. And it causes me a lot of shame and self-hatred.
At my best I’ve liked to think of myself as a high-integrity person. This year though, with the help of my high integrity friends, I have been shown that is really not the case. I am high integrity when people are watching. I am high integrity when it suits me. I am high integrity when I think I can get something out of it.
But as soon as it’s just me, like a creeping cloud of miasma in a movie, the shadow appears. The selfishness, the sloth, the greed; the sin.
And it is very human I guess; but I don’t want to just be human. I would like to be a good human; aspirationally a great human.
And what I have seen this past year has shown me I am far, far from that.