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