This I Believe
Candor resonates with me much more than placatory feedback; therefore, I believe that integrity is my guiding principle. Whether sharing or receiving information, I often find myself performing intrapersonal audits on the completeness of the information provided during interpersonal interactions. This is a practice that I carry across personal and professional relationships. This comes from valuing ‘trust’ over ‘love’, which I have further developed into integrity over other traits. I can trace the transition from ‘trust’ to ‘integrity’ to two separate experiences.
The first coming during my youth, when I was able to spend a week with my paternal grandfather, in the Missouri Ozarks, and asked me, “What is a friend?”. After hearing my answer, he responded with, “A friend is someone that will tell you when you are wrong but will still fight on your side”. I have taken this to mean that a friend is someone that can be trusted to tell you the truth, even if it is unpleasant. This is when I decided I would rather be trusted, than loved. I carried this concept forward into my personal relationships, which is when the second evolution of my guiding principle occurred, from ‘trust’ to ‘integrity’. Specifically applied to romantic relationships, I have expressed my value in trust as based in the principles, "Honesty, Loyalty, Respect". Over time I have developed those further to be, “Integrity, Fluency, Respect”. This has been the result of a few iterations, such as “Integrity, Loyalty, Respect”, and “Integrity, Literacy, Respect”, which lead to my feeling that integrity is a proactive pursuit of honesty or truth.
When I think of the word ‘integrity’, I think of a craft or vehicle traveling from origin to destination. In the case of water/ air/ spacecraft, one of the most fundamental requirements is hull integrity. Without integrity, the craft is not likely to reach its destination with the cargo or occupants intact. Integrity requires a vigilance in consistency and that is why I believe that it should be applied across personal and professional relationships. When applied across personal or professional contexts, attraction leads to interaction and the series of subsequent interactions are where the scope of each relationship is. Without integrity, how can we be accountable to the expectations of any relationship or interaction? Without integrity, there is no hope for completeness. Integrity is what keeps relationships afloat, the same as hull integrity keeps a boat afloat.
In conclusion, without challenge there is no progression and without integrity there is no accountability to actions needed to overcome those challenges. I don’t see trust being achievable without the vigilance of integrity. Vigilance in consistency inherently ensures the maintenance of ‘fluency’ and ‘respect’, which extends into all aspects of my life. I use ‘fluency’ to mean both language proficiency and interpersonal fluency. A pursuit of completeness in language(s) and interpersonal behaviors is best accomplished through an open mind, and open ears. I constantly challenge myself to grow my circle of positive interactions and strive to be an opportunity maker and not an opportunity tyrant by expressing that love and truth are exercises in integrity.