Integrity

By Ryan Lindner, red belt

Integrity is sticking to what you know is right.  It is standing up for what you believe in, being honest about everything.  It controls how much people believe you, how much they can trust you, and, indirectly, how much they care about you.  Also, integrity can be used to describe how much you have messed things up, and your reliability to not do that again.

Integrity is very important.  It makes your life a lot easier, not having to convince everyone they can trust you every time you make the slightest mistake, and people don’t tend to care as much if you almost never do something wrong and you slip up one time.  Integrity leads to lenience, lenience leads to trust, and trust leads to rewards.  However, lack of integrity leads to distrust, distrust leads to corruption, and corruption is not good.

Integrity should be used everywhere if possible.  However, no one can actually do that, so home, school and civilized society are big areas where it can help everyone be happier.  If you can trust someone to do their job, you can do yours better, knowing you don’t have to worry about them.  Also, if you are playing with a friend, they know you won’t do anything bad, or influence them to do bad things and get them in trouble.