live with integrity

Integrity…

being in tune with my heart and soul…

being brave enough to say no.

being free enough to go my own way and keep true.

....

When I think of integrity in my life…and consciously choose to commit to integrity~ I feel very strong and clear even though I do not know where I am going… I feel at peace.

Somehow comforting in itself.

at one or two moments at least, this is a challenge. I just want to rise to the occasion more often. I’m asking a lot of myself with this one.

I pray that your awakening comes with ease and grace, and stamina when the going gets hard. To love yourself as you are a miracle, and to seek yourself is to have found yourself, for now. And now is all we have, and love is who we are.

by Anne Lamott~ Where Do I start?

it is not easy, but you have to own your behavior and dismiss others behavior that you cannot control. After nearly losing our son, we chose to be true to our values and ourselves. There is nothing more important

Integrity is consistency of actions, values, methods, measures, principles, expectations and outcome.

Integrity may be seen as the quality of having a sense of honesty and truthfulness in regard to the motivations for one’s actions.

In context of behavior or morality, integrity is the virtue of basing actions on an internally-consistent framework of principles. This context emphasizes depth of principles and adherence of each level of postulates or axioms to the those it logically relies upon. Ethically, people have integrity to the extent that their actions, methods, measures and beliefs all derive from the same value system.

In the context of accountability, integrity is a measure of willingness to adjust a value system to maintain or improve its consistency when expected results are incongruous with observed outcome.

I vow to do my best to help change the world for the better. To help stop genocide of humans and other animals. I won’t stand around when someone is being bullied. I will be the best person I can be.

Poor little spider. I’m so sorry. Why is it that whenever I try to help something… someone… I just end up hurting them? I could see the life leaving it’s little body, it was an accident, but I hardly see how that changes anything. A life lost is a life lost. All the thoughts and feelings of that life disappear forever. Never more will that poor little spider experince the world. Dear ant, I hope your’re okay….

This is tearing me up inside… I know one must continue to live on and try to live the best life possible, but I feel that all I do is hurt when I try to help. But if I don’t do anything at all, then someone could get hurt… It’s a catch 22. I wanted so much to just help that spider. I really did. I hope there’s a life after this one… If not then I have destroyed a life. I suppose integrity is simply trying to do your best, but what if my best ends a life? I guess all I can do is learn from this and try to be more careful when catching bugs (or arachnids) to bring them outside… It was still alive, I think, after I hurt it, I tried to end it’s pain quicker…. I feel like a monster, but I know I’m a good person. Good people can inadvertantly do monstrous things…

In the end all we have is our integrity. I think of integrity as that which we hold most important in the world. To live with integrity to me is not the same as someone else. This will be one of the few that I probably will not check off, because one can never be done living with integrity… If I am ever in some dire situation and I still hold on to my intergrity, then I might check this off because it will mean that I haven’t forgotten, even in extreme situations to always stick to what I believe to be right… Of course that doesn’t mean one has to be close minded to live with integrity… I once heard a saying that the wisest of humans is he/she who is able to listen and truly consider what other people say without necessarily believing them.

I always want to be the sort of person who brings a stray dog on the street some food and water. The person who, no matter how many friends it loses me, stands up for what I believe is right. Who fights hard against cruelty, but who never resorts to violence, only ever defence. The sort of person who makes a fool of herself in front of people and can laugh about it, who doesn’t care, because she felt like doing whatever it was she was doing. I want to speak out against the actions of even the most popular politicians and historical figures… even if my family disagrees with me. It’s easy, after all, to dislike Hitler, but much harder to look at people like FDR or Obama and say that they too have done things that I disagree with and have made mistakes. As have people I know and love. As have I.

I don’t think of integrity as simply always telling the truth, I think of it as not turning ones head away from what is unpleasant, but purposely going up to it and understanding it and doing something about it.

I’m proud that the boyf and I recently decided we’re working on our ‘lashon hara’ (from Hebrew, literally ‘evil speech’) together – it’s going to make a huge difference to the vibe in our home, and hopefully our attitude towards other people. Lashon hara is the umbrealla term for not speaking badly about others, not dipping into speculation about other peoples’ lives/relationships/decisions etc and not bashing people we don’t even know! But it’s just the tip of the ol’ iceberg – to live with integrity filters down to all areas of life, loving, living..