So while walking down a hallway at work, I noticed a single white napkin on the gray floor. I noticed several people look at it and pass by. It irked me and I picked it up and threw it away. Not saying I also vacuum and spit shine the corners of every table on the third floor but this took no effort and I just simply threw it away as it was convenient for me. It was also convenient for them, too. Made me think about integrity.

Integrity is the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles, or moral uprightness. It is colloquially a personal choice to hold oneself to consistent moral and ethical standards. – Wikipedia 

How you act when no one is watching, the opposition of hypocrisy, integrity. I’ve always felt that this simple, basic quality of people is one that is mostly known but never adhered to. Always do the right thing, or at least as much as humanly possible. No one can ever have integrity to the T though. There are limits.

We have to make decisions based on what limited information we have available to us. What if in the process of doing an action of high integrity, that action leads to something unfavorable? What if this fear leads us to not take action, and leads to an even more unfavorable situation? This catch 22 situation is indeed, difficult. But what about the other obvious times?

Growing up, I’ve always had a huge conscience. Not saying I was a saint, but I felt bad doing something against my moral code. One can have a huge conscience but still act against it. As much as I can, I try to follow that path my conscience points to. But why is it so difficult for people, including me, to follow?

I feel people are so worried about how others view them that they tend to make decisions based on how others perceived them. Personally, for me, this isn’t my biggest issue. I have to wake up to face myself in the mirror every morning (because I have to shave, brush my teeth and apply lotion I am forced to literally). We care about how people think about our character, that we do things out of character to appease them. Peer pressure. Wanting society’s acceptance.

My biggest issue with keeping integrity is self interest (which I’ll explain in another topic). Is it within our realm of power to help someone get a bite to eat? The change in our pocket would do. It’s something right? But we don’t want to. What if that person attacks us? We’re on a tight schedule, we can’t help, sorry. What if the ends justify the means? Do something now, but it’ll pay off in the future and then we can reflect later after we reap the spoils of our deceit.

We lie sometimes. Some lies are white lies. Some seem like white lies but plant the seeds of rupture to a friendship or relationship. But even if lying may seem like the best thing to do, for now, in the long run, it could make it worse. And even if telling the truth now may make or break a friendship or relationship, should the truth be told? Is ignorance really bliss? For me, it would eat me from the inside out. How can I smile when I know that I harbor such deep seethed treachery? My integrity wouldn’t allow it.

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I wrote a previous topic saying I was quitting blogging. She probably doesn’t and won’t read my posts anymore. Yeah, 90% of why I write is so that she can read and give me feedback, or to make her smile. If the person I write for doesn’t read, what’s the point? But truth is, I like writing. A lot. I go to bed every night with probably a new thought that I never had before or a revelation to a previous truth or possibly just something I learned today. I want to share it.

So while thinking about integrity and what it means to me, what does blogging mean to me? Did I enjoy it simply because she enjoyed reading it and expressed it to me? Was I doing this for the right reasons? Yeah, definitely, it helped knowing that someone I know and care about likes what I write and responds to it. But as it stands alone, what I write is significant to me. That’s what matters, and I’m sure that’s how she feels I should feel about it too. It’s also selfish of me to expect her to want to read it. I never intended it to be perceived that way, maybe that’s just how things turned out to be.

As much as I’d like to believe I understand myself completely, there’s so many things left for me to figure out about myself. So many things left to improve. To change to better suit the landscape. Maybe I should have handled it differently, wouldn’t be how things are right now.

I wish for things to be different, but I can’t regress after all that has happened. I have to move forward.

 

Even if it has to be alone.