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. wingsApril 12, 2018 at 9:35 PM

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

    I have experienced it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 12, 2018 at 10:44 PM

      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

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
47 comments
Read more

Being Christian in BJP’s India

A moment of triumph for India’s women’s cricket team turned unexpectedly into a controversy about religious faith and expression, thanks to some right-wing footsloggers. After her stellar performance in the semi-final of the Wormen’s World Cup (2025), Jemimah Rodrigues thanked Jesus for her achievement. “Jesus fought for me,” she said quoting the Bible: “Stand still and God will fight for you” [1 Samuel 12:16]. Some BJP leaders and their mindless followers took strong exception to that and roiled the religious fervour of the bourgeoning right wing with acerbic remarks. If Ms Rodrigues were a Hindu, she would have thanked her deity: Ram or Hanuman or whoever. Since she is a Christian, she thanked Jesus. What’s wrong in that? If she was a nonbeliever like me, God wouldn’t have topped the list of her benefactors. Religion is a talisman for a lot of people. There’s nothing wrong in imagining that some god sitting in some heaven is taking care of you. In fact, it gives a lot of psychologic...
22 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

Sardar Patel and Unity

All pro-PM newspapers carried this ad today, 31 Oct 2025 No one recognised Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel as he stood looking at the 182-m tall statue of himself. The people were waiting anxiously for the Prime Minister whose eloquence would sway them with nationalistic fervour on this 150 th birth anniversary of Sardar Patel. “Is this unity?” Patel wondered looking at the gigantic version of himself. “Or inflation?” Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi chuckled standing beside Patel holding a biodegradable iPhone. “The world has changed, Sardar ji. They’ve built me in wax in London.” He looked amused. “We have become mere hashtags, I’d say.” That was Jawaharlal Nehru joining in a spirit of camaraderie. “I understand that in the world’s largest democracy now history is optional. Hashtags are mandatory.” “You know, Sardar ji,” Gandhi said with more amusement, “the PM has released a new coin and a stamp in your honour on your 150 th birth anniversary.”  “Ah, I watched the function too,” ...
15 comments
Read more

The wisdom of the Mahabharata

Illustration by Gemini AI “Krishna touches my hand. If you can call it a hand, these pinpricks of light that are newly coalescing into the shape of fingers and palm. At his touch something breaks, a chain that was tied to the woman-shape crumpled on the snow below. I am buoyant and expansive and uncontainable – but I always was so, only I never knew it! I am beyond the name and gender and the imprisoning patterns of ego. And yet, for the first time, I’m truly Panchali. I reach with my other hand for Karna – how surprisingly solid his clasp! Above us our palace waits, the only one I’ve ever needed. Its walls are space, its floor is sky, its center everywhere. We rise; the shapes cluster around us in welcome, dissolving and forming and dissolving again like fireflies in a summer evening.” What is quoted above is the final paragraph of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s novel The Palace of Illusions which I reread in the last few days merely because I had time on my hands and this book hap...
12 comments
Read more