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April 30

Integrity 

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in·teg·ri·ty

-noun

1. adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty

Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc.

Integrity is a lovely word. It comes from a common root with integer, meaning whole, undivided, untouched, equivalent to in- + -teg- (from tangier to touch) + -er. Literally "that which is not touched, hence whole."

I remember in college having several different social groups of which I was a sometime member, each representing one of my experiments in self-defining/self-discovery. The other musicians from the school jazz band; the guys I'd been in the traveling carnival with (somehow we all ended up back in school); the house full of radical, neo-hippie feminists from whom I rented a room; the girl, and her friends, who imported peyote from Arizona; the intellectuals and liberal arts philosophers who hung out at the coffee shop and Freddie's Feed and Read, the food co-op/bookstore near campus. 

One day the planets so aligned that I was in the company of one group when representatives of two of the other groups came into sight. I don't remember where we were, but I remember suddenly freezing, panicked, wondering who I was going to be when all of them came together, realizing in that moment there was little or nothing solid about myself, and that to be true to one group would be to betray another (or so it seemed). I think I probably ran home and hid for days after that.

The beauty of integrity is that there is one truth to access, rather than a panoply, one for each day of the week and each social situation. That one truth lies within, not without. It is not contained in the moral fiber of the community, or in the needs of a given moment. If a cashier gives me too much change, whether or not I give it back is not dependent on how much or how little the amount, or how much or how little I feel I am short of cash, or who I happen to be with. It is dependent upon what lives within me, in that place that is untouched, that has always been untouched. The place of wholeness I access each time I meditate, and which grows more and more available to me in my eyes-open state as I continue this process of unwinding the stresses of my lifetime. In that place of integrity, of connection, I am in oneness with nature itself. And nature knows, always, exactly who I am, what I should say, what is the best thing for me to do. All I need do is play along.

In my imagination today I will bring someone along with me to watch my interactions, someone who knows me and whom I respect, and I will see myself through that person's eyes. (That "person" might be God, if that idea works for me. Or my high school football coach. But probably not the owner of the carnival.)