a temporary place: integrity
prettykat and i went to see enron: the smartest guys in the room tonight. i know, later than everyone else. but it got me thinking about something i had taken for granted for a while now. my character.
integrity
ever since the great baptist fallout of 2001, i haven’t thought much about ethics…specifically my ethics. i figured i had earned my stripes.
when i was a freshman i had a roommate from texas that i really liked, but she and i were constantly at odds. i couldn’t bring it to myself to realize that i was judging her. i think i did it partially out of anxiety and partially out of jealousy. at that point, i was in a relationship that had all the right means but foretold an end that i wasn’t particularly comfortable with.
he and i were supposed to be married. it was unofficial, but it was pretty clear that it was going to be the outcome unless things took a dramatic turn. it was god’s way. he was a good guy. the best guy i have ever dated (morally). but he lacked something that i soon came to realize was detrimental to our relationship. he lacked independance, individualism. and it became clear to me…so did i.
that break up was the hardest one i’ve ever been through. when i was in the fire of it with mr. a, i thought it was worse, but looking back it paled in comparison. i had released myself not only from a secure relationship, but i had also excused myself from the quest to better who i was.
religion can make you a better person. but if you aren’t careful it can also cloud you from yourself.
i’ve also been told that’s the point.
i used religion to hide my fear from my roommate, and from my family. i used it because i was afraid of meeting new people. i didn’t know how to act or what to do. when i realized i couldn’t keep it up any longer, rather than treat the real problem i hid in something else.
relationships. i had a couple relationships that i knew were troublesome, but i stuck with them anyway. that act in itself is a symptom of self-neglect.
when we no longer lived together, and i had stopped preaching at her, my old roommate and i got along great. i felt like i had learned something. maybe i was blaming religion too much. maybe it was more a me than a jesus thing.
admitting when you’re wrong is a tough thing to do. for over a year i had been failing to defend and protect a good friend from the people i wanted to like me. i let it go to protect my good standing. she and i talked about it when it finally culminated into a mess. a mess that should have come sooner, or shouldn’t have come at all.
protecting yourself is a natural instinct. it’s a survival mechanism built deep within our brains in order to keep us alive. some would argue that it is the only true way to be human, and that ethics and morality are a shaky structure built by society to keep the status quo. regardless, you make your own decisions and you take your own consequences.
so what have i decided for myself? what can i work on. i can set a standard for myself that i can try to follow. i can right my wrongs (there are many) or i can go on from this day forward having changed, leaving the past in the past. if you’re good from now on does it fix the past? is the past redeemable?
i know now that while i may have thought i’d earned my stripes before with the god stuff, the very fact that i haven’t seriously considered myself as a person in a good long while is a vicious tragedy. i think it should be done as frequently as i take in breath.
i can at least try to listen to that little shit voice of a conscience now and then.
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