#022321: On Integrity
A virtue to consider while you eat, drink or pick your face on February 23, 2021.
Good morning! It is February 23rd, 2021 and you are about to read an essay from a franchise I will henceforth refer to as the former title of this newsletter, Dispatch from In Here. (“In Here” meaning my brain.) These essays, often written as a stream of consciousness will communicate some of the dEeP thoughts, theories and questions on my mind (though they will not always answer them). For previous examples of the kind of writing you might find from here, I invite you to explore this essay from last month, titled “What if a question’s just a question?” And these two from earlier this month on filling philosophical (philling?) prescriptions, and shrinking into quietude.
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Have you ever experienced the intoxicating sensation of knowing that you can safely crack yourself open in the presence of some other person?
To be unaware that this is the sensation of bearing yourself whole without having to worry that your individual parts are being evaluated faithlessly is to miss what I consider a profound extension of grace -- of recognizing that the existence of your integrity is not up for debate.
Even more, in fact, that it -- the integrity -- is something you might want to protect.
I’ve been thinking about it because I recently read a definition of the word as “purity of intention.”
I posted about it on Instagram, and in response, my friend Kelly sent me photographed pages of a paper she’d read that challenged any preconception I’d unconsciously held by delivering with more conviction than I’m affording this summary the potentiality that integrity is purely a “positive proposition” -- that is, “it has nothing to do with good vs. bad.”
By the rules of this paper, integrity is wholly concerned with the virtue of keeping one’s word.
I like this part of the argument -- it might serve to remind me that hedging communication does not make me unclear or dense or unlikeably rude. On the contrary, it underlines a commitment to the seriousness of what it means to keep one’s word.
But where are the gaps -- why do some of us struggle to find our own compasses of integrity? What role does it play in our lives? How do you come to embody it and why do we talk about it now as such an intoxicating virtue to aspire towards?
What the hell is integrity?
And is the standalone pursuit of it even a worthwhile chase? Or do you have to pair it with morality, delve into loyalty and consider that fluctuation -- our constant changingness -- is, dare I say, an integral part of the human experience to consider as one attempts to appraise it in any meaningful way.
On morality as it relates: There are, for example, shit loads of people who are fiercely loyal to their word. Does that give them integrity? If it does, am I comfortable considering that when that loyalty misaligns with my own sense of it, they still have integrity? And further, in fact, that they might actually have more than I do.
I’ve seen my own shortcomings with integrity play out most acutely in my career. I would argue this has been the result of not having built boundaries -- of not knowing, in fact, what constituted a boundary. Only recently have I discovered that without them (boundaries), we (the royal) are more likely to become reckless, even indulgent, about having our desires accommodated. It’s like unconsciously, we negotiate where our priorities fall within the respective grading systems of our values in order to have the needs of our deepest wounds met.
I’m inclined now to think that this topic is on my mind for the very specific reason that having your integrity questioned is among the most distressing forms of denigration even though logically, it shouldn’t be. One’s compass of integrity is as subjective as, say, their sense of good style. The loyalty we ascribe to our own words or principles or values is as dynamically unique as the preferences we ascribe to our body types or hem lengths or dress silhouettes.
But the public performance of displaying integrity as a means to prove one’s worthiness of any number of things (one among them maintaining a livelihood) has complicated the matter completely. And made it much more challenging for me to buy into the supposition that it could be divorced from good or bad -ness.
When I got canceled (canceled myself?) last June, I wanted to surrender my person to those who then seemed like the vanguards of justice, uncovering my badness in real-time. I drew a direct correlation between this badness and what I thought I should do to become better. This is what drove me to step back from my own company.
Until that point, my own compass of integrity had been unintentional. That is, I’d never taken the time to construct a reality where I was conscious of the virtues I embodied. Even though they existed and for the most part, I lived them, they had no real structure because there was this gap between the quality of my experience as a leader in business and the level of success I’d achieved. This is what made it so seductive, I think, to fulfill the narrative that was being written about the impossibility that my historical motivations had been fueled by anything but total, unadulterated malice.
That my compass of integrity was no compass at all.
It has taken me the better part of a year to come back around to myself. If at first, I wanted to vanquish the whole of myself, and then secondly, instead, to reclaim that same whole, I have landed somewhere in between: shedding stars that have appeared in the constellation of my personhood with little or less intention than the greater portion of this system, and sustaining the ones that are, and have been, here as a result of hard work, and/or deep thinking — a sort of symbol of great meaning.
This process, fluid and fluctuating and forever incomplete in its very completeness, encapsulates the construction of one’s compass of integrity.
I think.
Alternatively, there is also this: When I am in the presence of more than two people, breaking bread over a table and communicating as such, I have this habit of asking these people to go around and say something significant about whoever is next to them. One night last week, the woman two seats away told the man to her left that he makes her want to be a better person.
I wondered briefly what this comment means. Of course, I’ve heard it before. I’ve even heard it said to me. There are probably infinite interpretations of what one sees in another to make them want to be better, but what would it take for me to feel compelled to make this comment and mean it?
When I woke up the next morning, I thought that maybe to say “You make me want to be better” is the same as saying, “I see a goodness in you that I believe in but have yet to capture within myself.”
And the relentless pursuit of this goodness for ourselves -- that might be integrity.
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To have its existence questioned is harsh, though not always unnecessary. But here’s the banner item I really want to drive home: It is very easy to play the roles that are expected of us when we are being underestimated — to fulfill the narratives our parents or friends or partners or gatekeepers write on our behalf. Sometimes these estimations are delivered as a sort of protection. They come in from people we really love, who also really love us. I’ve seen this happen with my own siblings and in my own life, as a boss and a parent and a kid and certainly as a partner.
But if you can open your ears to one person — just one — confessing belief in your goodness, it could change your performance. I’ve seen it, I’ve been it! Or at least am going through it.
I know we don’t know each other, unless we do, but I can tell you with confidence that if you are wondering whether or not you’re capable of becoming whatever good thing you want to be, the answer is yes — that you are.
I have no doubt that you are.