As I have said before, each year at the Winter Solstice I choose a word to work with for the year; this year my word was integrity. I haven't written much about this word, but I have thought a lot about it. Usually when we think of the word integrity we think about in relation to ourselves; are we acting with integrity? Do our thoughts, interactions and behaviors align with our own values and ethics? Whenever I thought about this word and how it applied to my life this is what I would think about and I didn't see why I would get this word for the year because I always try to act with integrity. I might complain about it from time to time, but it is important to my being to act with integrity.
This morning I read the following, wonderful passage from "A Heart as Wide as the World" by Sharon Salzberg which helped me see integrity in a different way. "My teacher Munindra had a student, a woman named Carol, who had worked in the underground in Holland, helping Jews escape from Nazis for five years during World War II. She had been captured twice by German soldiers and tortured, and nearly all of her friends had been killed doing the same kind of work. Of herself she said only, 'I was always filled with an all-consuming pity for this world, with the injustices, wars, hunger, persecutions, and cruelties suffered by the human beings living in it. I lived my life as a fighter against all I saw as wrong and especially unjust.' The rightness and naturalness of Carol's response did not mean that the work was easy or that there wasn't a price to pay. She in fact suffered recurring nightmares and deeply ingrained fears for thirty years. But, connecting and caring were intrinsic to her vision of life, and her own integrity compelled her to act in accordance with that vision."
We don't all have the opportunity or ability to do what Carol did, but this passage makes an important point, there is something that we are all called to do, compelled to do, or deeply desire to do; for me it is social work. After graduating with my bachelor's degree in psychology I decided that the path I was on in psychology did not help me answer my call to help people, which is why I chose that major in the first place. I was on a path to become a quantitative psychologist, one who would work with statistics, developing statistical models and hopefully improving the process of statistical testing. My decision to leave psychology was not a popular one with some of the faculty and they tried to explain to me how my work in statistics would be beneficial to people, but it wasn't beneficial enough, it wouldn't help people in their day to day functioning and it wouldn't help ease suffering or unhappiness. But most importantly, it wouldn't allow me to live in integrity with the person I see myself as being.
Many people are unhappy in their lives because they choose to do things for reasons other than that it answers their deepest calling. We don't all have to want to help people, but we do have to find a way to heed the call of our own inner being. That is integrity. When we listen to the calling of our soul, whatever it is asking, we are living in integrity. When we ignore that calling, we often enter into a state of anxiety or stress because we aren't tending to our true nature and it hurts us.
The work I am doing in my master's program is often difficult and upsetting. I have a couple of cases that I would even call heartbreaking because I cannot make the situation better, I can only keep it from getting worse. That's hard for me, I want to help people, and there is a price to pay for doing this work. But to not do it, to not deal with the difficulty and do my best to provide service to people to the best of my ability would be a greater price to pay and would hurt me more in the long-term.
Finding another job, changing our lives drastically, may not be something that we can do right now, but we still have to find a way to answer the call of our hearts. I hope that whatever call you may not be answering right now, you are able to find a way to answer it soon. To live in integrity with our truest natures, to be the people we really want to be in the world is critical to our well-being. It doesn't mean that we will find happiness, and happiness is a transitory state in any case, but it will empower us to fully embrace ourselves and our journey through life. It will enhance the lives of the people around us, regardless of what that calling is, and in the end, it will bring us more satisfaction and well-being than not answering it.
It's not easy, we often have to juggle multiple roles and it may seem that doing what is intrinsic to our vision of our lives and ourselves may compromise the duties and roles we have with other people. I don't think it has to be that way, I think it is possible to find a way to answer the calling we have and still be true to the roles and responsibilities we have accepted in our lives. In fact, I believe that it will make us more effective in fulfilling those roles and responsibilities. So if you find that your life lacks satisfaction, if you find that there is always some voice inside of you calling you to do something, I hope you find a way. Because to live in integrity with ourselves, as well as other people, is one of the highest callings and is crucial to living an authentic and fulfilling life.
