in·​teg·​ri·​ty

I remember sitting at an Irish pub along the Chicago River early last fall, sipping a canned cider with my then-roommate Jessica. She shared her fierce (and completely achieved/surpassed) ambitions for upcoming year, while I remarked about how goal-setting is not my forte (it honestly plays out in my life as a pianissimo, the book frequently recommended but never read). She shared about an exercise a friend had recently shared with her, through which she had been better able to set long-term goals: a value sort of sorts (no pun intended, but pun absolutely cherished). She walked me through the exercise, which involved me creating a list of values and whittling it down to one. Once one was identified as the most important, she asked, "what's even more important than that?". I was confused by this labeling of my presumed top-tier value as the penultimate, and even further confused when she asked the same question again--and then again, pushing me higher and higher towards what I hold at my internal peak - my personal masthead, my character crest.

Eventually I came to the conclusion that my core value is integrity.

Beautiful! And yet I find that in a world as gray as ours ("compared to what?") it is nearly impossible to be sure of how consistently you're acting with integrity. C.S. Lewis says "Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching" (which Oprah has since copped). It's cute how we think we can boil down integrity to "doing the right thing" - this is something my friends and I love discussing (along with What is God? How do you react when students crush on you? Why are some conservatives so selfish? and Dating sucks, huh?). Now, obviously myriad approaches can be taken when deciding how to exist in a group. From Freudianism, which one emblazoned source described as the belief that "man is an imbecile creature whom government must somehow protect from society and even from himself," to traditional Christian/Catholic adherence to rules/scriptures, to more karmic New Age principles deriving from Hinduism and Buddhism, to Progressive Christian ideologies like those of Richard Rohr. One may also choose from among Virtue Ethics, Consequentialist Ethics, or Deontological Ethics, basing decisions on "What do I value?", "Is it good?", or "Is it right?", respectively. The spaces between and beyond these approaches are boundless, teeming like schools of fish, with nuanced interpretations and amalgamations of structured and unstructured ethical systems, but the point is [hopefully] made. I write this only as a reminder that it matters why we do what we do. Our core value serves as a backbone, a home plate or nightlight for us to return to when we're dazed or downtrodden. When I lose my sense of self, I would love to have a clear light to follow back to my sense of self. I picture the green light from Great Gatsby, both alluring and grounding. I don't know what my green light looks like just yet--even if I can currently title it "integrity"--so my job is to continue solidifying and focusing in on it so I can weather storms more difficult and gray than the occasional breakup. I also write this to say, "it's super interesting identifying your core value - you should try it out sometime, reader."