Skip to main content

Integrity



An integer in mathematics is a whole number; that is, a number without fractions or decimals, a number without fragments.  Integrity is wholeness.  Integrity is the wholesome condition of not carrying fragments within.

More often than not, life gifts us a lot of fragments of broken hearts.  Fragments of broken promises, broken aspirations, broken trusts.  We are fragile and life delights in breaking us.  Some people gather the fragments and piece them together into a whole.  Scars may remain on that pieced-together entity, but it is whole once again.  Some people create art out of the fragments: music, painting, poetry, and so on.  Many choose to sigh upon the fragments.  For many, the fragments are a kind of excuse for not trying new ventures.  I have been broken, can’t you see the fragments, so leave me alone, they say.  Some of us enjoy keeping the wounds alive so that we can busy ourselves with nursing them, bandaging them every morning and evening, finding our own perverse pleasure in caressing the bruises.

Health is wholeness.  We have no choice but put together the fragments every time our fragile self gets broken if we are to lead healthy lives.  Interestingly, the primary meaning of integrity is honesty.  The healthy self is an honest self.  There is a deep correlation between health and personal morality.  Integrity is transparency of your soul.

Psychologist Erik Erikson presents integrity as the goal of one’s life as one advances into old age.  If you have lived a life of personal contentment, integrity or wholeness will be your reward in old age, Erikson argues.  Otherwise, despair will befriend you.  Erikson’s notion of integrity is about discovering an order and meaning in your life which is inevitably a part of a larger system.

Erikson used the term integrity with a technical meaning: fulfilment of one’s life.  But the concept is applicable at any stage in life.  The adolescent’s rebellion and the young adult’s romance as well as the older adult’s professional aspirations are all part of that integrity, provided we know how to bring order and meaning to all that rebellion, romance and aspirations.  Whatever we do should be in harmony with our being: even the rebellion and the romance and the professional ascents.  Lack of such harmony creates fragments.  Bringing the harmony back is precisely the art of rediscovering our integrity, our wholeness.

A friend leaves me broken-hearted.  I have to understand why the friendship was not in harmony with my being.  I have to piece together the fragments and bring back the harmony.  Difficult, painful, but there’s no other way ahead. 

Integrity is what keeps us whole, healthy and happy.  It is an honest confrontation with the core of our heart. 

PS. #BlogchatterA2Z: Letter I

Comments

  1. Difficult, painful, but there’s no other way ahead.

    I have experienced it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My words come from experience too. I wish life was easier. Tomorrow it's about love that I'm going to write. Othello and Desdemona.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In this Wonderland

I didn’t write anything in the last few days. Nor did I feel any urge to write. I don’t know if this lack of interest to write is what’s called writer’s block. Or is it simple disenchantment with whatever is happening around me? We’re living in a time that offers much, too much, to writers. The whole world looks like a complex plot for a gigantic epic. The line between truth and fiction has disappeared. Mass murders have become no-news. Animals get more compassion than fellow human beings. Even their excreta are venerated! Folk tales are presented as scientific truths while scientific truths are sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. When the young generation in Nepal set fire to their Parliament and Supreme Court buildings, they were making an unmistakable statement: that they are sick of their political leaders and their systems. Is there any country whose leaders don’t sicken their citizens? I’m just wondering. Maybe, there are good leaders still left in a few coun...

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Death as a Sculptor

Book Discussion An Introductory Note : This is not a book review but a reflection on one of the many themes in The Infatuations , novel by Javier Marias. If you have any intention of reading the novel, please be forewarned that this post contains spoilers. For my review of the book, without spoilers, read an earlier post: The Infatuations (2013). D eath can reshape the reality for the survivors of the departed. For example, a man’s death can entirely alter the lives of his surviving family members: his wife and children, particularly. That sounds like a cliché. Javier Marias’ novel, The Infatuations , shows us that death can alter a lot more; it can reshape meanings, relationships, and even morality of the people affected by the death. Miguel Deverne is killed by an abnormal man right in the beginning of the novel. It seems like an accidental killing. But it isn’t. There are more people than the apparently insane killer involved in the crime and there are motives which are di...

When Cricket Becomes War

Illustration by Copilot Designer Why did India agree to play Pakistan at all if the animosity runs so deep that Indian players could not even extend the customary handshake: a simple ritual that embodies the very essence of sportsmanship? Cricket is not war, in the first place. When a nation turns a game into a war, it does not defeat its rival; it only wages war on its own culture, poisoning its acclaimed greatness. India which claims to be Viswaguru , the world’s Guru, is degenerating itself day after day with mounting hatred against everyone who is not Hindu. How can we forget what India did to a young cricket player named Mohammed Siraj , especially in this context? In the recent test series against England, India achieved an unexpected draw because of Siraj. 1113 balls and 23 wickets. He was instrumental in India’s series-levelling victory in the final Test at the Oval and was declared the Player of the Match. But India did not celebrate him. Instead, it mocked him for his o...

Whose Rama?

Book Review Title: Whose Rama? [Malayalam] Author: T S Syamkumar Publisher: D C Books, Kerala Pages: 352 Rama may be an incarnation of God Vishnu, but is he as noble a man [ Maryada Purushottam ] as he is projected to be by certain sections of Hindus? This is the theme of Dr Syamkumar’s book, written in Malayalam. There is no English translation available yet. Rama is a creation of the Brahmins, asserts the author of this book. The Ramayana upholds the unjust caste system created by Brahmins for their own wellbeing. Everyone else exists for the sake of the Brahmin wellbeing. If the Kshatriyas are given the role of rulers, it is only because the Brahmins need such men to fight and die for them. Valmiki’s Rama too upheld that unjust system merely because that was his Kshatriya-dharma, allotted by the Brahmins. One of the many evils that Valmiki’s Rama perpetrates heartlessly is the killing of Shambuka, a boy who belonged to a low caste but chose to become an ascetic. The...