Honoring your word
essentially includes (makes whole) what's missing from
keeping your
word
as the bastion of integrity. This illustration will
demonstrate
what I mean: I give you my word that I'll meet you at 3:00pm, but an
earthquake destroys the bridge between us, so I can't keep my word to
meet you. If
keeping my
word
is the bastion of integrity, then I'm out of integrity, having not kept
my word, yes? It looks like a circumstance has effectively
determined my integrity ... or has it?
What's at issue here isn't that my promises should be kept (and not
regarded lightly), nor that integrity may be the highest
quality for human beings, and nor that circumstances occasionally
supersede our promises. The issue is that
keeping my word,
in and of itself, is an insufficient bastion of integrity.
Honoring my
word
on the other hand, includes
keeping my word,
and it also includes cleaning up any mess I cause when I don't
keep my word,
and it also includes re-promising to complete what I originally
said I would do. Like that,
honoring my word
allows for being in integrity even on those occasions when I don't
keep my word.
Honoring my word
allows me to be responsible for / to take charge of my own integrity,
regardless of the circumstances - a responsibility for which
keeping my word
is insufficient.
"Honoring your word"
obviously refers to your word (and so by inclusion, to
my word) and is therefore somewhat personal, occurring in
the space of each of our individual
worlds
(if you will). But when we both (and when we all)
honor our word
and hold each other to
honor our word,
the possibility of a
new world
opens up: it's
"the world
of word",
a universal world
in which each of us honors word as
a purely positive
proposition.
It's not merely as your word, and neither merely as
my word: rather, in
this new world,
it's word that's verifiably
out-here,
word like a universal distinction, word like a global occurrence, word
like a tangible phenomenon.
Here's what the difference between
"honoring your word"
and "honoring word" is: "honoring word" doesn't occur in the domain of
the personal ownership of word. It has no possession of word in
the way
"honoring your word"
and
"honoring my word"
have. "Honoring word" is like "honoring
rain".
Look: it's not yourrain,
and it's not myrain,
it's just
rain
- verifiably
out-here,
universally distinct, globally occurring
rain.
Like that, "honoring word" refers to and respects
the world
of word ie the verifiably
out-here,
universally distinct, globally occurring word - which is the verifiably
out-here,
universally distinct, globally occurring impersonal possibility of
integrity.
My intention with this essay is to flesh out word as in
the world
of word, as distinct from your word and as distinct from my word (it
isn't personal), and to honor that word. You keep and
honor your word as an expression of your integrity. I keep and honor my
word as an expression of my integrity. And both of us doing so, creates
a universally impersonal, contextual, all-inclusive
world
which I call
"the world
of word",
a world
that comes into being like a possibility with us all
honoring our word.
With the global onset of transformation,
the world
of word has become manifest. It's
the world
against which all other
worldsshow up
as arguably inadequate and / or insufficient - as evidenced by
the way
their rampant out-integrity has become opportunistically normalized and
accepted, with all too familiar and tragic consequences.