When You're Out of Integrity
From The LIFE Letter, Volume II, Issue
36, October 21, 1999
What happens when you're out of integrity? When everything you think, feel, say, and do are not in agreement? When who you are is not who you're being?
Well, I'll tell you. I found out this week, through some first hand experience. And it was not a pretty sight!
It
all started with a new friend (we'll call him Fred) offering to let me use a copy of a piece of his software. He had already bought the upgrade and wanted me to have it. Although I didn't need it and don't make a habit of "borrowing" software, I did wonder what the improvements were, so was excited that he had made the offer.
As I waited for the software copy to arrive, I did notice that I was acting out of the bounds of my sense of personal integrity. And although I knew it didn't feel right, and surely knew it wasn't right, I was willing to entertain the rationalizations anyway.
They ran the usual gamut. Everything from the owner of the company makes way too much money anyway; to the last upgrade I bought from this company was a royal pain in the rear and provided no advantages at all and only served to crash my computer more often than the old piece, so they owe me; to what could it hurt and who would know; to it's not like I'm some huge corporation who can afford all these upgrades; to this upgrade is probably not much better than my present one anyway; to since my new friend, Fred, had offered it as a sign of his generosity, the least I could do is take it so as to not make him look out of integrity for offering it--and perhaps jeopardize a new friendship.
I
even got on the phone to some of my closest friends to "confess" my lack of integrity, thinking that such confession would either be good for my soul or that they might talk me out of my transgression. Neither happened. I didn't feel any better, nor did my friends try to talk me out of it. In fact, they agreed with my rationalizations--especially the one about the guy making way too much money anyway. And they even added that not only was that not fair, but that he must be taking advantage of a whole lot of people to be making so much money! So much for friends being willing to take responsibility to keep you in integrity!
When the software arrived, I proceeded to load it. And that's when it all started downhill! The long string of lies about who owned it, on whose computer it was being loaded, why "Jerry" was showing up on their records when I was "Fred.", etc, etc, etc. Then more lies to get it registered.
And then I discovered that part of it was not working properly. Which of course meant more lies to get it addressed by the support department! And several hours on long distance with tech guys who can't figure out the problem and who keep calling me "Fred"! And of course, I'm sitting there sweating, just knowing that any moment they're going to find me out and send the software patrol out to get me. Or at least infect my computer with the worst virus in history, capable of not only destroying my computer and losing all my data, but probably burning my house down and holding my children hostage as well.
If I were to put a monetary value on the time I've spent with this "free" software, I could buy a major share of stock in the company! And I haven't begun to consider the cost of the mental, emotional, spiritual, and relational energy and stress.
And then other things started happening. Like when I decided to take a break from the hours of fruitless tech support, and flipped on the TV to watch Oprah. The entire cable network was shut down. Then the phone rang and it was the shop foreman where I had taken my Jeep to have a couple of radiator hoses installed, a $35 bill, and he informed me that he had found several other things it needed to the tune of nearly $600 bucks. Then I went bike riding with a friend, got to talking with her, jumped the curb of the bike path and fell off my bike.
As I sit here waiting on the tech guy to call me (or actually, "Fred", the guy of the lie I've become in order to get the support) with yet another try to fix the glitch in the software, I've decided that being out of integrity is not such a good thing. It gets your Karma all out of whack, and then it's all down hill after that! And besides, it's just not right.
So, I've decided I'm going to uninstall that "free" software. I'm going to restore my integrity, and be happy being me again.
And I think I'll tell my friend, "Fred", who offered the software to me, to just send the money instead!
Copyright 1999 Dr. Jerry D. Overton
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