About Integrity

You can do as many good things as you want, there will always be those who will see them as bad.

"It's a cold world; they don't practice what they preach. Willingly and consciously, they dish it out but they can't take it ." Old Man Integrity delivers a lecture to school girls named Naiveté and Confusion on the preached practice of practicing what they preach. In walks Old Lady Winter wearing a toque and a turtle neck. She always dishes it out when she can't take it. Sometimes we have to protect ourselves from our own abuses in order to keep our integrities. Sometimes as we grow up, naiveté and confusion gets in the way of reason. Sometimes people can seem cold but they really don't mean to be.  Sometimes people can say things when they're angry and stupid and really not mean it. Sometimes people can do things when they're frustrated, self-doubting, and disillusioned and they really didn't want to. But they couldn't help it, it just popped out of them. Old Lady Winter pops out of the sky leaving a mess for everyone else to clean up, that she's not willing to clean up for herself; leaving a mess for spring to clean up. Sister paranoia pushed everybody out of her life because she didn't want them to hurt her. Sister Irrationality pushed everybody out of her life with her hot-tempered, impatient, mouthy nature. But now she's left all alone without a friend in the world and she's the one who's suffering.

Don't turn your back on all of the things that you truly love or want to love out of fear that others may think that you don't truly love them. If you want to laugh, do it. If you want to cry, do it. If you want to sing, do it. If you want to sponsor an AIDs Orphan in Africa, do it. As long as you know it is for your spirit and not for the glory of it. But neither be all talk and no action. Never doubt another's spirit. Never doubt the goodness of another's spirit unless they repeatedly and deliberately hurt another in malice. A divorce, a prison term, or dropping out of school; a bad TV habit, or dating habits, or money habits; not even a sex change is a good enough reason to put someone's spirit beneath yours. I find wasting money even worse. But that's just me.

Elaine 07