Reconciling this
state
of
affairs
with my penchant for final
(easy)
solutions ie for quick
fixes
is an unavoidable
rite de
passage
if I'm ever going to lay claim to living a life of
integrity
or (to deploy an earlier
analogy)
to
being
a climber of the
mountain
of
integrity.
I
mean
why even bother embarking on climbing this
mountain
when there's zero chance of ever making it to the top
(in both
Werner's
postulation as well as in mine)?
Listening
Werner
while
being
with
transformation,
and all the while
inquiring
into the
nature
of
integrity,
a few
sacred
cows
quickly succumb to
close
scrutiny. The first (and arguably the
essential
one to vanquish) is that
integrity
is a virtue. We have it that bad people don't
maintain
integrity,
and good people do. But
integrity
isn't normative.
Integrity
(which is to say acting without
integrity,
or acting with
integrity)
isn't merely one of many
possible
ways
to
play
the
game
of living. No,
integrity
is the entire
game.
Without
integrity,
nothing
works
(says
Werner
- repeatedly). It's a chilling realization actually: a life without
integrity,
can't
work
(that's
integrity
as
a purely positive
proposition,
not as a wrong / right, bad / good moral judgement). Here's what
I've often overlooked: high
performance
is only
possible
when based on a
platform
of
integrity.
Not only will a bicycle with broken spokes in a wheel not
work,
but it's never going to win races.
Integrity's
impact on
workability,
is indisputable. And
workability's
impact on
performance,
is indisputable. So
integrity's
impact on
performance
is indisputable (it's taken me waaay too long to
finally figure that out).
For many people (I suppose) the connotation of
"performance"
will be in producing results as in a job or as in a sport. For me,
when
Werner
speaks
"performance",
I
listen
all of the above, and I also
listen
"performance
as in a life well-lived". That's enough for me. That alone
is worth the price of admission. I've released my
attachments
to smoking and drinking as a segue to a life well-lived (I could
say the same about an unhealthy diet and inadequate exercise). I've
released (for the most part) my needs to dominate and to be
right. I've released assigning importance to my own
opinions,
realizing that all
opinions
are codifications of
the truth,
and I've become skeptical of all such codifications especially
my own. And after releasing all of them, given what's made
itself visible from underneath that erstwhile pile of obfuscations
of
the truth,
I've finally released any and all doubts about
Werner's
assertion about
integrity's
impact on
performance
as
a purely positive
proposition.
Without this final release, a life well-lived is unreachable, if
not outright
simply
not
possible.
Sorry, but it isn't.
|