My Journey of Integrity

It was the best of times - a family beach holiday.

A long awaited and welcomed respite of rest and relaxation in an ocean playground of sandy beaches accompanied by great restaurants, excellent entertainment and very comfortable accommodations. Each moment was full of pleasure, enjoyment laughter and excitement.

Why then was I up every night until 4:00 am?

This is my personal story about integrity.  It was difficult to deal with at the time but immensely satisfying once I figured it out.  

It all started as my brother-in-law handed me a hamburger and said “You have arrived my friend. This is the greener pasture we all aspire to; this is what it is all about –security, a good job, a loving family and vacations in the sun. “ 

In that instance I realized that the world he was talking about was no longer enough.

Warren Buffet differentiates between outer and inner scorecards.

The outer scorecard is the external measure of what life has given to you as a result of your choices and actions. This measurement focuses on external things such as material wealth, physical beauty, image, power and social recognition.

The inner scorecard is the internal measure you have given to life as a result of your choices and actions. This measurement focuses on internal things such as mental health, life force vitality, resiliency, meaning and happiness.    

My quest to understand this simple distinction began that night on the beach. Under the moonlight sky, I watched the waves roll onto the sandy shore. I felt the wind on my skin as I breathed the fresh salty air and listened to the sounds of the ocean. I let all of these sensations wash over me in an effort to cleanse my heart and my mind.  

The world of external scorecards, I reasoned had integrity –it was a unified whole. It was consistent and it had some simple objective measures we could all agree upon.  

My wretchedness that kept me up at night was that I felt like a fraud – I did not have the material wealth I wanted. I was not blessed with physical beauty. I had no power to speak of and no public recognition.

This feeling of fraud was compounded by my inability to integrate my single, solitary, burdened and perhaps meaningless life with any of the external scorecard measures that everyone seemed to accept.   

My life was half over. My family was established. My profession was complete. Was I predestined to spend the next half as an external and internal failure?  

Should I settle for my life as it was? Should I accept my wretchedness? Should I live my life out in silence in the shadow of the moonlight? Or should I dare look elsewhere?  

Fear and trepidation dominated my emotions as I mustered the courage to look beyond my little space into the vast world of materialism, technology, global economics, international politics and world religions.

I could not begin here. The world was too big and too complex! I had nothing to offer.

I thought of others and how they dealt with the problem I was faced with. In that moment I realized that billions of people, regardless of the time or place in which they lived, had their own unique physical, emotional, mental and social needs.

Each one of these people, I reasoned, met in varying degrees the socially accepted outer scorecard while wrestling, as I was doing, with their own inner scorecard.    

That was no help!

Suddenly the beauty of the beach was heightened by the sounds of quiet joy as a young couple strolled along the oceanfront, oblivious to anyone or anything but themselves and their love for each other.  The two were one.  There was no inner and outer. There were no scorecards.

There was only the here and the now in all its abundance.    

In that moment, three things about my life became clear.

I realized I was needed and wanted, not by the unimportant many but by the critical few- my family.

I realized that I had enough money to pay for what I needed and not enough money to pay for I what I wanted.

I realized that I lived and worked within a country that allowed the freedom  of  choice to explore our lives and its purpose in relative safety and security.

I was humbled and grateful. I had the starting point of my journey. Something inside of me cried out that there was so much more, if I only I had the courage to look for it.

Later in that week of nights, I read about Carl Jung concept of “individuation.” He said:  

“What youth found and must find outside, the man of life’s afternoon must find within himself. The tasks of the first half of life are external having largely to do with establishing a family and career. The tasks of the second half of life are internal having largely to do with finding meaning in our life and in our death.”

There is something within each of us, he concluded, that seeks to manifest in the fullness of time a "true personality."

This uncovering of one’s "true personality," is a development process that bridges the gap between the unconscious treasures of the inner with the external successes of this world.

Integrity is the name of that development process. Integrity is the journey where the disparate parts of our lives are integrated into a coherent whole –into our true personality. Integrity is a journey towards consistency and purity.   

Integrity begins in the here and now. Integrity looks beyond what is to what can be. It is this journey where one finds the unique treasures of one’s true personality- vitality, resiliency, mental health, peace and happiness. 

It dawned on me that many before me and certainly many after me would come to the same realizations that I had. This journey is nothing new. It is well worn path that is uniquely fashioned by each person who chooses to look for more when the world is simply not enough.

The path is not dominated by the intelligent, the rich, the beautiful, or the famous. There may indeed be some who have one or all of these characteristics on the path but it is not reserved for them. It is reserved for everyone who wants it.     

In the day that I was deemed complete by an outer scorecard, I found myself ship wrecked and wretched on the beach of my life’s destination. 

On that day, my life began again in earnest. I go forth...eagerly with eyes wide open.

Want to learn more? Go to my web site www.principledynamics.com or  call me. I want to speak to you about integrity and how it can help you and all of us.