Integrity?

Late this afternoon, I ducked into the local Hobby Lobby for a few minutes. Being a 'projects' person, it's one of the retailers I frequent most in my home town. I looked at a few things, scratched my head a time or two, shrugged my shoulders, and moved on.

Approaching the front of the store, a folded paper object lying flush against the tile floor caught my attention. There's no question what it looked like, the question was is that really what it appears to be? Upon picking it up and unfolding it, it was obvious that it was a genuine, recently printed twenty dollar bill. It wasn't some obnoxious novelty stuff that looks like US currency from more than five feet away, and it wasn't a $2 bill that someone dropped. Those tend to appear this time of year, and with the fold right after the number 2, the zero wasn't visible until it was straightened out.

I turned right and started scanning the checklanes for an appropriate employee to relay the bill to. I found one, a woman who was departing a register and returning to the salesfloor. I displayed the bill, holding it taut by the ends, and informed her that someone had let it escape their possession.

She looked at it, at me, back at it, blinked a time or two, and then reluctantly took it when I offered it to her, as if she couldn't believe this was actually happening. She took about six steps back to the register she'd just left, paused, picked up a phone receiver, paused, and hung the receiver back up on its cradle. She opened the drawer, dug beneath the tray, and produced a tablet of some sort, inviting me to write down my name, address, etc.

I retrieved my Zebra F-301 from my right hand jeans pocket where it always resides, clicked the ball point out, and wrote: Found: current issue $20 bill, 430 pm, lying in front main aisle, twenty five feet in front of register #8, on 22 December. By: T. Gordon, 641.421._ _ _ _.

Even then, I still had the impression she had no idea that someone could actually find a twenty dollar bill on the floor and not pocket the thing. She seemed completely amazed by the whole affair!

Who knows if anyone will ever claim it? If they try to pass it back to me, for all I care, it could go the Salvation Army kettle or the Christmas Cheer fund.

No, I'm not allergic to money, despite what those who are puzzled by all the volunteer work I do may wonder. Nor am I fantastically wealthy like others have concluded. Where I live, there's a lot of people who see me as our local Bruce Wayne. Very, very few people know where I live since I keep a truly low profile. I am reputed as 'dapper', receiving a lot of compliments on my grooming and dress. I've always been known for my singular taste in clothing. My hours are a bit strange, but I'm often seen around town during the day, so it's not a huge stretch for a more or less reasonable person to believe that I'm independently wealthy to the point that I don't work. I do! Often twenty hours a day when the weather is good; I'm up at three most mornings. Not all of it is for money, though. Quite often I'm doing things I'd otherwise have to pay someone else a tidy sum to do. Good help is always hard to find in this day and age, especially around the north Iowa area. Trustworthy people are in extremely short supply around these parts! I am quite frugal and I exercise a considerable degree of financial responsibility, making the most of what I've got. I live very modestly. My wardrobe is classy, partly because I selected my clothing wisely and I've accumulated it over a period of years when I could get a super bargain on timeless apparel. I still wear a lot of things I was wearing fifteen years ago, but no one realizes it. By planning ahead and making my moves carefully, I work a splendid paid job part time for the flexibility it offers and I don't worry about money.

Sure I could use twenty bucks. Who couldn't find a use for it? Heck, right now my much beloved 200,000 mile Ford Taurus has a front wheel hub bearing that escalated from a low hum when the weather was very cold to grinding, grating, and screeching today. I might fix it myself very soon, but I have definite reservations about undertaking that job considering I don't currently have a heated garage to work in. I might see if someone can fit it in, but repair shops are booked up pretty good this time of the year around here. I wouldn't count on it. I took a look at another Taurus today, a few years older, but not as many miles. I might just get it so I've got something to get around in until May or so when I can dismantle the front suspension of my car with a relative degree of comfort. I need to do some other serious preemptive repair work anyway, so this might just be a good thing, though I'm sure it'll need a few things if I get it. If anyone could use $20 at this point, it's me!

I'll manage, I always do. I turned the bill over to the store not because I didn't need another $20, but because I belong to an organization that professes to believe in service before self, integrity first, and excellence in all we do. The organization does not truly have those core values if its members don't!

So what is integrity, anyway?

We hear it enough, but I've come to realize that few people really understand what it is.

Most often, the definition I encounter from folks is that integrity means always doing the right thing. It doesn't sound bad, but does it sound right? There's nothing else it could mean? If I recall correctly, the dictionary definition was moral excellence and honesty, followed by wholeness or soundness. Sounds reasonable, but still lacking something.

Most of us know that the word 'integrate' means to combine or complete, or to eliminate barriers that segregate or divide. Public schools and the armed services integrated in the early 1950's. Even more of us know what the term 'disintegrate' means: to dematerialize or fall apart.

Integrity really means that you stick to your guns. If you tell everyone you believe in certain things, such as honesty, courage, compassion towards others, et cetera, you'd better be prepared to prove it through your actions. If you abandon your principles whenever you merely feel the urge to do so, you have no integrity. I think it could be said that someone has even less if they tell themselves that they have certain values or are a certain way, only to act in exactly the opposite manner when confronted by reality.

I turned the $20 bill in because I've always told myself that I'm the kind of guy who would do that. If I kept it, then I just proved to myself that I'm a man with no real principles, and worse, a man without honor. If you can't trust yourself, who can you trust? Remember, you lie the loudest when you lie to yourself!

You can tell yourself you're a great person all you want, but if you do the things that an abject loser would do, do you still feel like you're a great person, or are you just blowing yourself off?

Today I helped a friend of mine move. My car was making this horrendous noise, and I didn't want to head toward the farm with it to fetch my truck. Besides, the weather was predicted to go south on us, and I didn't want to be driving a two wheel drive truck on snow and ice. I'll be the first to admit that I should have called it off and stayed home. I think anyone else would have. I went anyway. I just took my Taurus, and told Heidi that we'd get started with whatever number of boxes and whatnot we could shove in there next to ourselves and her two kids. We only made one trip - she thought my car sounded worse than anything she'd ever ridden in and she felt bad that I was pushing it just for her. I reminded her that I was doing it because everyone else so far had failed her. Her husband hit her for the last time, so she had him arrested and sought a restraining order against him. He didn't pay the rent for the house he no longer could go near, so she had to move to an apartment she could afford on her McDonald's wages. Someone with a pickup offered to move her, and backed down, ostensibly because his father had died. That's understandable, if it was in fact true. The other volunteers, one at a time, apparently had other things come up. It was my turn at bat. I wasn't dead, hospitalized, or incarcerated, so I WAS going to be there and keep my word. I explained this to her, and she admitted that people have been blowing her off her entire life. Sadly, she turns forty in a couple of weeks. That's a long time for a person to keep getting blown off by family and friends.

After I dropped her and the kids off, what do you suppose I did? Yep. I went home. Then I dug around a bit to uncover an old tube of sand I had behind the garage. Squirrels had chewed the bag, but no big deal. I cut it open with my Benchmade Griptilian tactical knife that's always in my pocket next to my Zebra retractable pen and shoveled about thirty pounds of it into a bucket. The bucket went to the trunk of my car, which I then drove back across town to the apartment Heidi was moving into. I pulled in, parked, and proceeded to sand the living daylights out of the glazed path through the yard everyone used to reach the front door. She was sure someone with a truck would eventually show up to help her move, and the way we slipped and slid all over unloading just a half dozen boxes, I knew anyone else to follow would be in for a hell of a time. I didn't have to do it. I'm not being paid for any of this. I could've used the sand for my own sidewalks, and I was definitely taking a risk with my wheel hub bearing getting worse by the mile. I did it because I know how I'd feel it I blew off that opportunity to take action and someone fell and got hurt as a result.

I don't always get a lot of sleep, and what I do get often leaves a lot to be desired since I live next to an active railyard and between two noisy neighbors. A clear conscience is one of the softest pillows known to mankind, though.

Have you ever seen some of that hidden camera footage showing one unsuspecting person after another pocketing a dollar bill intentionally placed on the sidewalk? I have. I sure as heck don't want to be left wondering if I was being observed, recorded, and perhaps someday meant to be shown on television where everyone who would recognize me could see me pocketing a dollar bill while the commentator is deploring the moral behavior of people these days...

Not having to worry about that possibility is worth far more than $20!

Integrity is funny in a way. It costs you little or nothing to have it, but it is priceless. Remember, once you lose it by violating your own declared values and principles, IT IS GONE.

I often express my view on shoplifting and theft as an integrity issue. I think every person alive has their price. If you steal, you have just sold your integrity for the value of what you've taken. I don't know what my price is, but I'd like to think it's at least a million dollars. I shake my head whenever I see someone swipe a candy bar. Is sixty nine cents all they think they're worth?

Yet, remember, I said integrity is sticking to your guns. People are more inclined to do this that one might realize. If your child steals something, accuse him of being a thief and watch what happens. Sure as night follows day, that kid will steal again. Why not? You already made it perfectly clear that he's a thief. He's just doing what it takes to be exactly what you said he was. If you're a crook, wouldn't not doing crooked things, which you claim to believe in since you are, after all, a crook, be showing a lack of integrity on your part?

If you don't know where you stand, its never too late to stop and figure it out before you become any more lost in this world.

God bless,

the TiGor