Integrity People, Integrity

Happy Monday! I had a nice weekend, full of excitement, stress, anger, newfound motivation, humor, and laziness. It was a roller coaster of emotion and activity! Through the ups and downs, twists and turns, I was reminded of a couple of pretty important lessons in life, well...in my life anyway. We'll start with integrity, it is defined as:

1 : firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values

2 : an unimpaired condition

3 : the quality or state of being complete or undivided

Well, you will find that many people in this world do not find the importance in such an important quality as integrity, and instead choose to display immaturity, dishonesty, greed, deceit, and recreant behavior. It is important to learn this virtue of integrity early on in life, as it becomes vital when flirting with success and power especially. Some who find power or success will then use it to poke at the people who may not have supported them in the past. These people are cowards who hide behind their power.

A person with integrity will display the same quality when they're poor and powerless or when they're rich and powerful. You see integrity in leaders everyday, leaders that you respect. Unfortunately you also see the lack of integrity in others everyday, especially in those who have a false sense of what success really is. The second lesson that I was reminded of, I actually got a little chuckle out of it, was that if you are one of those integrity lacking people and you like to throw your minimal power around at the expense of others, then try not to have the audacity to ask one of those people for anything the next day, especially if that person is me.

Most of you are friends of mine, or at least acquaintances. You are because you show integrity and are genuinely good people. I choose to surround myself with good people, because generally good things happen when you are surrounded by good people. So, for those of you who are a friend, I appreciate you for being real and for naturally doing things the right way. And for those of you who will continue to be petty, juvenile, unprofessional, and cocky...when you realize you have hit rock bottom and have your own actions and chosen personality traits to blame, accept it quickly. Maybe then you can still grow up and become a man.