Posts Tagged ‘integrity’
Just Imagine
Imagine if we didn’t hear news the instant things happen. What would it be like if we could put the genie back in the bottle? Can we just download an app for that?
What if democracy worked without it being so easy for fascist threats to simmer in broad daylight for days that become months and now years? Maybe if we didn’t hear news every second, it wouldn’t seem so obvious.
I’m imagining what it would be like if our toes never got cold. How about if no addiction existed? While we are imagining, why not turn Thanksgiving into a gift-giving holiday? A brand new car could become the new tradition. I’ve seen the ads on TV. The car companies want us to accept that giving a new car is the universally accepted standard of holiday gift giving.
I’d sure be thankful if someone gifted me a new car. An electric one. Preferably, Subaru. Can I pick the color?
I’d be thankful if all criminals were instantly incarcerated and innocents set free. Like magic. No long drawn-out trials. The universe knows what is right and wrong and could figure out who did or didn’t do it.
I like to imagine that the stories are true that Billionaires paying a fair percentage in taxes would ease a lot of fiscal stress on government programs without great hardship to said Billionaires. Then, I imagine that all Billionaires suddenly paid that fair share they owe.
Same thing for the $900Millionaires and the $800M, $700M, et cetera.
What if tendons and ligaments never stretched or tore and bones wouldn’t break during athletic competition? That’d be great. Oh, and I’d like it if NFL receivers never dropped passes that should have been easily caught. Sure, it would benefit the competition as much as the home team, but I think it would make the game more fun to watch. It bothers me to see highly paid professional athletes not succeeding at the basic skill level they are supposed to perform.
At the same time, I am forever grateful to have chosen a career path that didn’t involve tens of thousands of screaming fans micro-analyzing my every action or decision. I dropped the ball plenty of times.
I saw a news flash about charges filed against a person running a brothel near Washington, D.C., with a mention that the customers were politicians, military, and business leaders. What if none of these guys lowered themselves to that level? I like to imagine being led by people who behave with the highest integrity at all times and also that no sex workers ever find themselves in circumstances that lead them to choose that line of work.
When I find myself returning to reality, I imagine myself reducing my news exposure long enough to forget all the things that send me into fantasies of people behaving better than their best selves.
But really, imagine that.
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Being Me
It’s been a long time since I just let words flow from my fingertips without any preconceived notion of where I was heading or what would come out next. One reason for that is, it doesn’t tend to produce a result that holds much in the way of value for anyone reading other than me; and even I don’t get much from going back and reading the words that have piled up.
However, I’m feeling like lately my writing has settled into a somewhat humdrum pattern of dreary detail about waking up, driving to work, coming home, seeing our pets, clearing some snow, cleaning up after the horses, and lamenting over the news.
Where is my soul in this chronicle of the day-to-day?
When you write and publish a narrative of a personal everyday, there develops a pattern. The longer it goes, the more likely it can become something of a facade.
I suppose regular users of other social media are already well aware of this phenomenon.
It is likely that I am only writing what I want the world to know about me. Of course, there is probably a portion of who I really am that readers glean from my choice of subjects and words over time, which defines me more precisely than I think I am actually doing. But that is happening somewhere beyond words. It’s out there in our intuitive perceptions.
I guess I inherently accept that level of revelation.
I remember actually pondering over how to traverse the long walk in front of the packed bleachers of my high school gymnasium during basketball games without appearing to be the hypocritical fool I was attempting to be.
I was overly-selfconsciously trying to stroll as if I was not the least bit self-conscious about being an awkward adolescent walking in front of hundreds of classmates, parents, neighbors, friends, enemies, and strangers who shouldn’t care, or even notice me in the first place, yet were likely doing that very thing themselves; actually noticing and judging me whether or not they recognize the pettiness of doing so.
Hypocrisy.
I didn’t want to be a hypocrite. Somewhere along that adolescent time period, I experienced a profound epiphany that inspired me to strive toward being the same person in every moment. Regardless of whom I might find myself with at any given moment, I want to be my most genuine self. It’s not easy to achieve, but it is a noble goal.
I believe I have failed probably as often as I have succeeded over the years, but with that as my goal, the failures have been minor. I still judge others more than I mean to. I still say things behind a person’s back that I wouldn’t say to their face.
But I catch myself doing it most of the time, and that is the key to interrupting the pattern and making a correction toward the goal of integrity I ultimately seek.
One tool in aligning words with noble intentions is the art of saying nothing when you have nothing good to say. Another is to think before you speak (or write).
What I’d like to achieve is a place of enlightenment where I can write without thinking or filtering and have the flowing words reveal my pure soul and the narrative of the day to day, hypocrisy-free.
Wouldn’t than be a nice me to be.
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Relative Something 