The Word You Are Looking For Is “Integrity”
I counsel successful people. Some of them run multi-million dollar businesses. Others are accomplished lawyers, doctors, and professionals of all types. Many are retired, having achieved everything they wanted to professionally or financially. All of them have contributed so much to the world in so many ways.
And yet…
What constitutes success in one arena guarantees nothing in the next. Running a profitable business does not necessarily translate into successful parenting. Skills in the operating room do not always make their way into skills for being in a relationship. The ability to masterfully represent your client in a court of law does not mean you can masterfully represent yourself in a failing marriage. So many people I know and guide are sick and tired of feeling the success in one slice of their life and feeling like they are failing and falling in another, or perhaps all other, areas of their life.
The one word that comes up over and over, what they are looking for whether they realize it or not, is “integrity”.
Usually, when we think of integrity we think of honesty, telling the truth to others, or a person with good values and character. Certainly, it is all of these things. However, at its deepest level integrity is really about “wholeness.” As the secondary definition of the dictionary defines, “the state of being whole and undivided.”
What all of these people are searching for is to stop living compartmentalized lives. In one area of their life, they are the master, but in another, they are a slave. In their business, they feel an indescribable competence, and yet when they return home to face their teenage kid they feel like an utter failure. Or maybe at work, they hide their homelife struggles, presenting a false front. Perhaps it’s that they put on the smile around their friends, yet they are miserable and drowning on the inside. Whatever it is they are living outside their integrity. They are living divided and it is destroying their soul. So they say to me without actually saying it, “help me to live divided no more.”
As my teacher, Parker Palmer says it best,
I pay a steep price when I live a divided life feeling fraudulent, anxious about being found out, and depressed by the fact that I am denying my own selfhood. The people around me pay a price as well, for now, they walk on the ground made unstable by my dividedness. How can I affirm another's identity when I deny my own? How can I trust another's integrity when I defy my own? A fault line runs down the middle of my life, and whenever it cracks open-divorcing my words and actions from the truth I hold within-things around me get shaky and start to fall apart.
We are not here to live a version of ourselves. No one wants to feel like a fraud as if they are lying by their very presence. Nobody should have to be the person I eulogize when officiating at their funeral, the one where I have to steer clear of a part of their life. You know that eulogy, you’ve probably heard it many times. More accurately it’s what you didn’t hear because it wasn’t mentioned.
The philanthropist who gave generously to his community but withhold praise and affection for his family.
The businesswoman who led her company to great heights but who was estranged from her daughter because she was an abusive alcoholic at home.
The patriarch who was at the center of his family’s life, just don’t mention the affairs for which no one will acknowledge and for which he never atoned.
The person who checked all the boxes, did everything they were supposed to, and fulfilled everyone’s expectations except one person, the only one that truly counts, their own.
To paraphrase the poet Rumi, “if you are here unfaithfully with us, you are causing terrible damage.” These people, just like us, when living a divided life are causing loved ones, the world, and most of all themselves great damage
It doesn’t have to be this way.
If you are above ground, breathing, and conscious it is never too late.
It isn’t about perfection. It isn’t about morality. It’s not about being faithful to your religion, your community, or the people in your life.
It’s about being faithful to yourself, your true self, your soul, and the life you were meant to live.
It's about achieving and feeling success, true success, the kind that only ever comes when you are living your true self, your authentic life, divided no more because you are living with integrity.
Remember, if you are here unfaithfully with us, living a version of your true self and authentic life then you are causing terrible damage. But when you are here all in, undivided and soul centered, well then you are a source of blessing, an inspiration to all those around you and will be remembered, when that day comes and eulogized as a man or woman who truly had integrity.