Integrity – A Way Of Life
“INTEGRITY”, the standard definition of the word is to adhere to moral or ethical standards which create a soundness of character. That means the state of being whole and undivided. Now really these two statements go hand-in-hand because every human being in this earth is living in perfect alignment with individual’s own conscience.
“Morality” is one of the pillars of Integrity. Morals are concerned with the rightness or wrongness, goodness or badness of behaviour. Morals are like a filter that conscience is fed through. But this is a serious gray area. For example, some people strongly believe it is right to punish a dangerous criminal with death penalty, others believe this is morally wrong. Some people believe honesty is always right, other people believe it is right except for when it will hurt someone. This begs the question that right or wrong is something that's defined by the individual themselves or by society at large.
A lack of integrity should really be defined as the quality of not adhering to the principles communicated by individual’s own conscience. For example, if one’s own conscience communicates to the individual that honesty is right for the person but in that moment the person tell a lie then the individual is demonstrating a lack of integrity, because right there in that moment there is a split between one aspect of the person and the person’s own conscience. People tend to see a lack of integrity when they encounter some kind of crisis or external stress. It applies to human life only when the truth is going to get the individual in trouble that the person tells a lie. It is not until people suffer financially that steal; it is not until people are tortured that they betray someone's trust. In order to feel better people in society do anything they can do to get out from the external pressure even if that means splitting themselves.
People have to put effort into integration. Being split into different parts is actually a collective human condition. People fragment themselves in order to cope with the external world; they preserve themselves by compromising until the day that being compromised becomes a detriment to their well-being. One need to find alignment between all aspects of oneself and have all of them agreed upon what is right before taking action.
It is very interesting to hear what politicians say and how they speak, because many political speeches go like this “this country is sick, nation is sick and if people vote for this party, the situation will be better”. The writer GK Chesterton once said about the politician’s language, “this is quite dangerous language”. He said that in political and social science all politicians seem happy to say, “they are bad”. But what they can't agree on is what the “good” looks like and what one political party suggests as a solution to the problem of the sickness to another political party is worse than the sickness is claiming to address. It is because people cannot agree on the good. That is why the nation always needs a healing time after any political process. Lack of unity of vision of what it means to be whole, integrated, complete as a human, is the reason behind it.
Lack of integrity can be easily recognized and corrected by fulfilling promises, commitments and keeping words. If one is saying something and doing something else, it is obvious that there is a split within oneself. After correction, one should apologize to them who were suffering because of the split of the individual. True apology should never come with a justification about why the person did it.
Sometimes business leaders say that talking about integrity is great in a very abstract way but living in the real business world where figures are simply the bottom-line, integrity does not come into it. But that is not true. Businessmen make decisions about integrity every single day. They will not do business with people they do not trust in the business world .They demand a higher rate of return to justify their investment in that business deal. Because of the risk it brings people make decisions about their morals and ethics all the time. The world remember the day September the 11th 2001, that is when planes flew into buildings around the world and as a result of those attacks the stock markets around the world collapsed. Because of this all the stalk markets were facing a big challenge of existence. By early 2002 stock markets around the world had largely recovered. But a few months after they had recovered society had some massive scan scandals with companies like WorldCom and Enron and many others who literally were wiped off because they had a massive morale internal failure and as a result of the collapse of these companies the stock markets around the world fell further and faster than it did after the terrorist attacks of September 2001, telling people that what the market feared the most was not a terrorist attack from without but a moral collapse from within. Questions of integrity affect the society all of the time. Lack of integrity is so damaging because it is a form of self betrayal.
One should be completely honest and authentic with oneself. Sometimes people deny the inner truth because the individual is afraid to admit it or ashamed of it. Denial is a complete enemy of integrity.
People should work on becoming comfortable with the sensation of fear. Integrity requires bravery. In MAHABHARAT, at the end of Kukshetra War, Danvir Karn was killed by Arjun but till his last breath he kept his integrity, he kept his promise. Everyone loves Karn because he died with his integrity intact. Bravery is not about lacking fear, in fact bravery cannot exist unless there is fear. It is about facing the fear. Acting in accordance with own bravery is difficult but it is not more difficult than living life without integrity.
