What is of utmost importance to me in a person is how much a person of integrity you are. Most of us are nice, righteous, grateful and giving as long as things are easy, as long as it is easy to be good. But, once the going gets tough and being morally right comes at a considerable price, how many of you are going to stick with integrity? A few such moments come in everyone’s lifetime. In these moments, we are offered a choice and these choices that we make, define who we really are.

> I can relate with an incident that happened to me. I don’t exactly remember the details but I was in college and it was an off-lecture. The professor was present though and asked us to continue with any work that we would like to. So, my benchmate here was using his mobile phone and maybe some online add popped up and his phone started ringing. Usually, you would call my benchmate a person of integrity but what followed is; he panicked and the good lad immediately passed the phone in front of me as if I were using it! hah…

See, that’s just a small scale story of lost integrity. In bigger terms,

How confident are you that you will never ever kill someone under any circumstances?

or steal?

or cheat on the love of your life?

I repeat __u n d e r __ a n y __ c i r c u m s t a n c e s !

You sure think you would never do such a thing, but how sure really? Think of the emotions that could make you do things that you would never want to do; Fear? lust? Helplessness? Curiosity?

The line between good and evil is thin. Circumstances can drive people to do terrible things. And ‘INTEGRITY’ is the strength that keeps you from crossing this thin line. We often see that even the people that seem most righteous to us do evil and selfish things while someone who you thought to be a crook does something extremely selfless. The difference between them is their ‘integrity’. I once heard about this beautiful line in a spoken-word-poetry called‘trigger warning’ by Karina Stow. (Link)

> “I don’t believe in lying to children

But when she asks me what’s wrong I still tell her the storybook version

I tell her that once a bad man broke into my home

I wish I’d also told her that bad men look like respectable young men

Trigger

That bad men will compliment your Nana on her lemon squares

Bad men write love poems

Trigger “

Integrity could be judged even from casual of behaviors like- *a dude passing the blame of using his phone in a class onto you in sudden panic* but you can’t pass judgment, so don’t believe me on this thing about the dude. Maybe the dude could be a man of integrity when it comes to bigger decisions in life. You never know! So never judge, have strong but flexible opinions. Now that’s yet another point.

But how could you make sure that you stick with integrity in toughest of times? Well, by being conscious about it. You have to consciously know about this human weakness and remind yourself to be strong if such things ever happen. You just have to tell your mind to not break easily and stick with morality. Believe me, your mind will prepare yourself by the time you think of crossing the thin line.

Conscious attention is the solution to a lot of our problems, but that’s yet another point 😉