What’s in your integrity?

By Sharmen Lane

A long time ago I heard someone describe integrity as “what you do when no one else watching.”  Ever since that day, that has been my interpretation of what integrity is.  Are you who you say you are?  Do you do as you say and say as you do?  Is who you are in public, who you are behind closed doors?

I read an article recently written by Holly Hill the Australian Sugarbabe, who wrote and is sharing her theory of Negotiated Infidelity.  It’s basically where a couple has an agreement to not be monogamous. It allows people to have a relationship with each other but have sex outside the relationship.  I found this concept to be fascinating because isn’t the purpose of being in a relationship to not be intimate with other people?  If you want to have sex with other people then why not just be single?

To me, negotiated infidelity would be out of integrity.  A romantic relationship is a romantic relationship because it’s monogamous.  However, other people clearly don’t feel the same.  But I do ask you, what’s in your integrity? What does the word mean to you and do you live by it?

Today we are living in a world where public figures like Tiger Woods, and Jesse James, cheat on their wives and blame it on sex addiction. Is it sex addiction or just poor judgment backed up by little personal integrity?  We live in a world where a Bernie Madoff pulls off a $50 billion ponzi scheme and multi-billion dollar companies go under because of fraud or misrepresentation. Entire industries are wiped out because of unscrupulous activities, and those activities are often carried out by the leaders themselves. Where is the integrity? If we raised our own personal level of integrity would these things still happen?

Where does integrity begin? Does it start with our government, our role models, our school system, our family, our spouse, or does it start with ourselves? To what standard do we hold ourselves? If each and every one of us has integrity and live by it and require it from those around us would those things still be happening in our world?

Let me leave you with this… what does integrity mean to you, and are you living up to it?

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Lindsay Lohan, Tiger Woods, Jesse James. Famous people, doing infamous things.  These are role models to our youth, that are not setting a very good example. However, they get ridiculous amounts of attention for behaving badly.  Is that the standard we want to set?  Is that example we are setting for young people today? Thank goodness for Judge Marsha Revel, who sentenced the 24 year old actress to 90 days in jail.  It’s about time that we make rich and famous people be responsible for their actions so all the young kids today don’t continue to grow up thinking that there are no consequences for bad choices and actions. 

It’s time to raise the standard. We need to stop giving attention to bad behaving role models.  When someone becomes a public figure they should be held to yet an even higher standard, not a lower one where they get even more attention for setting a negative example.  And when they do things that do not set a good example for young people who have made them their idols, they should get less or no attention, not more. What does it say to our youth when a rich and famous actress gets arrested for drunk driving and violates her parole and continues to get away with it?  What does it say to young men in the world when Tiger Woods is a superstar golfer, the very best at what he does, exercises extremely poor judgment and gets more media attention for the bad thing he did?  Doesn’t that send the message that bad behavior gets you a press conference, on the cover of newspapers and magazines and on the first page of every internet site known to man? Is that what we want our future leaders of the world to think?

It’s time to raise the standard. If we want to see a positive change in the world, we have to be that change. That change starts with the man in the mirror, as Michael Jackson sang it. The question is, are you setting a high standard for yourself and for those around you?  Are you being the change you want to see in the world? Are we holding those that are role models and those who have a lot of influence on our kids, teens and tweens to a higher standard… and when they don’t live up to that standard are there consequences? 

Let’s raise the standard.  Let’s join together to hold public people to a higher standard so we can raise the bar and create a world we all can be proud of.