Are you listening to the song?

Deep inside, our integrity sings to us whether we are listening or not.
It is a note that only we can hear.  Eventually, when life makes us ready
to listen, it will help us to find our way home.

Rachel Naomi Remen

We all are blessed with integrity--the question is whether we're willing to listen to it or not, whether we're willing to allow it to become a guiding force in our lives.  Many of us like to put it aside, to hide it in a closet or a drawer, while we make decisions more for expediency and personal gain than for the sake of maintaining our integrity.

The dictionary definitions of the word are interesting.  It gives us what most of us see as the main definition, that of "the quality of being honest, etc."  But the second definition is also extremely important--possibly more important to me.  It says:  "The state of being whole and undivided."  Now, how many of us can say that about ourselves?  I want to be able to, and I wish I could, but I'm not sure that I'd be being honest if I were to say that I am "whole and undivided."  I divide myself too much, and I'm not sure that I do have that kind of integrity.  If my heart tells me to treat a person a certain way, yet I don't do so, do I have integrity?  If I know that there are rules about computer use at work, yet I spend time on Facebook in violation of those rules, do I have integrity?  No, because there are competing forces against me.  I've made an agreement to abide by the rules of my workplace, and because I'm violating that agreement, I'm torn inside.  I know that I've made a promise that I'm now breaking, and that's never a good feeling.

Our integrity is a wonderful guide through life, if we but heed it.  Sometimes we don't heed it because we're not ready to do so, and one of our goals in life should be to work towards living always according to our integrity.  Other times, though, we fail to heed our integrity by choice, and that choice always will lead to harm, one way or another.

Listen to the song your integrity sings, and live by that song.  It truly is a beautiful song, one that can definitely, as Rachel says, lead us home.