Reading the words:
Who I am is that: my life works without integrity.
Made me stop in my tracks. It took me a moment to get what this actually meant. What does it mean to say this? It took me a few hours to ponder it and I realised that it was a simple statement of how I am, and how I relate to integrity, and that before I can go about changing that, I must first accept this statement as true, and allow the impact of that to start sinking in. To really get present to what the impact is of this.
The last few weeks for me have been a deep dive into integrity and how my life basically has very little of it. But this statement really started me thinking at a much more significant level, and I read the statement as more than just a statement of a simple truth, but as a call to action.
Not just who am I that I can believe that my life works without integrity, but who are we as a culture that we believe our lives work without integrity, and beyond. Who are we as a planet that we believe our planet works without integrity.
Driving to work this morning I got fully present with that, and sat there driving down the highway with tears streaming down my face. As the human race, we are that our planet, our lives, our existence works without integrity. All you have to do is look around for 5 seconds to see how that is simply a grand delusion. Homelessness, environmental disaster, financial oppression, governmental oppression, war, famine and so much more.
So many people today are preaching "balance". I feel that balance has become a cop-out. We have to put things in perspective, put things in "balance". This is an excuse for a lack of integrity in our world. It's okay, incremental improvement is acceptable, everything in balance, everything in moderation. It's fine to say that if you are that "Our world works without integrity". If you see that our world doesn't work. If you want that to be different, then you have to be a stand for something different, something much bigger and far more exciting and far more interesting. That thing is integrity. I am a stand for bringing integrity to my life, to my community, to my society and my world. To be that stand means I am also a stand for integrity in your life. I am a stand that my life can't work if your life doesn't also work. I have to be logically; if your world is lacking integrity, then my world is also, and that means if your life is lacking integrity, then so is mine.
How do I take that on without going mad? I haven't figured that out yet.
