Pinpricks in My Integrity

When the government closed on the first of October, I pledged that I was using my furlough to reboot my life.  I was going to meditate, exercise, and write daily, and I was going to give up sugar.  I've done well on the meditation, writing, and exercise (except for one very rainy day.)  The sugar has been a real struggle.  It's not that sugar is such a bad thing...for most people.  For me, sugar is an addiction.  Just a little bit and I have to have more: it controls me.  It is a slippery slope. 

A week ago I made and took a chocolate cake to another function, and I ate it when it was served. There have been other "little cheats." It is the 19th, and I made brownies.  I will take them to a function I am attending tomorrow, but I knew when I decided to make them that I'd lick beaters and need to sample to make sure they tasted OK.  I lied to myself.  In The Game Called Life Lizzie called them pinpricks in her integrity--miniscule lies that we tell ourselves to justify other lies, and, as she continued to say, "I have enough pinpricks in my integrity that if they were all put together they would be as big as the hole in the Titanic."

I debated a friend once about whether it was out of integrity to exceed the speed limit, even if everyone else is driving five miles over the limit too.  My argument was that when I applied for a driver's license, I had agreed to obey the laws of the state.  That included driving the speed limit, even if almost everyone else was speeding.

Driving the speed limit is a no-brainer for me. I really attempt to act in integrity all the time.  I even moved into a house once that already had cable connected, and the former owners had been getting cable service for years without paying for it. I knew it was stealing from the cable company to take the service without paying for it.  I went to the cable company, explained the situation, and said I wanted to start paying for it.  That was a no-brainer for me, too.

Integrity is the very most important thing to me, and I know that I have not always been in such deep integrity.  Yet I really try.  I've wrestled with my addiction to sugar for my integrity for years.  I'd like to think we all have an Achilles heel--something that nags at us painfully.  It really doesn't matter if everyone has something.  What matters is that I keep my own commitment to myself. 

When I cut the brownies up and put them in a container to take to my function, I started to hold back two, cut in half.  I was going to put them in the freezer, and I would have four little desserts I could bring out.  That is when I started thinking about the pinpricks in my integrity.  I added a second tier to my potluck container and put the ones I was going to hold back in it.  I am holding nothing back in this fight.

That brings me back to forgiveness. I slip...on sugar, and on other things.  In each moment I face a choice point--a point in time when I am conscious, when I can forgive myself, and when I can start over--choosing to be in integrity.  When I tune in to my heart, I know that being in that choice point and choosing consciously, whether it is a 100 times or a 1,000 or 10,000, is how I will galvanize my integrity.