CAN WE CHOOSE WHEN OR WHERE WE HAVE INTEGRITY?

John .C. Maxwell wrote the important ingredient to leadership is integrity. This is his and my perception of it:

The dictionary defines integrity as the state of being complete, unified. When I have integrity, my words are my deeds match up. I am who I am, no matter where I am or who I am with. Sadly integrity is a vanishing commodity in our society. Personal standards are crumbling (like the walls of Jericho) in a world that has taken to hot pursuit of personal pleasure and short cuts to success and that is how we get Ponzi skims. In  a cartoon in the New Yorker, two clean shaven men are sitting in a jail cell. One inmate turns to the other and says “All along, I thought our level of corruption fell well within community standards.” The White House, The Pentagon, Capitol Hill, the church, the sports arena, the academy, even the day care centre have all been hit hard by scandals. In every case, the lack of credibility can be traced back to the level of integrity of the individuals within those organisation and institutions. A person with integrity doesn’t have divided loyalties(that’s duplicity), nor is he or she merely pretending(that’s hypocrisy). People with integrity are ‘whole’ people; they can be identified by their single mindedness. People with integrity have nothing to hide and nothing to fear. Integrity is not what we do so much as who we are. And who we are in turn determines what we do. Integrity binds our person together and fosters a spiritual contentment within us. It will not allow our lips to violate our hearts. When integrity is the referee, we will be consistent, our beliefs will be mirrored by our conduct. We sometimes get confused by weighing our deception my sister once pointed out that we usually complain about corruption when it is harming us. It is the same thing as person complaining about how many millions the government is corrupting but then goes on and does the same thing by lying for financial aid whether it is saying your parents don’t work because they were once retrenched or it is lying about living with your gran mother when your parents are able to pay for your fees. God says all sins are the same whether you committed adultery or you didn’t love your neighbour as you loved yourself so you should ask yourself what is the name of a small fraud or a big fraud. It’s time to start living an honest life which will be something hard to do. Start by telling your teacher if they gave you extra marks.