When I was really young and still in Catholic school, I asked one of my teachers what "integrity" meant, and was told that having integrity was doing the right thing when no one was watching. Surely, this must be the best way to define the word since I still remember that interaction to this day. Now, if integrity is justifying one's actions to themselves, then accountability would be having others find one's actions justifiable. To find them to be right.
Recently, I was working at the MET. I don't know how much I can talk about it because I signed a NDA I didn't read, but at the very least I can probably say that I did work there and that the revenue from ticket sales fund the giant Slip N Slide in the staff cafeteria. When I first started the job, my uncle from Australia was in town and he was all too enthusiastic to share his wisdom on being a functional member of society.
But I didn't really need it. I was accountable. I worked so much harder than anyone else in my department, even when no one cared. I thought it was more fun, and that I owed it to the person who got me the job when I probably didn't deserve it. My coworkers assumed I was being humble when I told them the tryhard who does his hair every morning, tucks in his shirt, and runs around in uncomfortable shoes all day would spend his days off staying up all night drunk, playing Tekken, and eating cold pizza.
My uncle though assured me that the person people saw me as was actually the true me. And with that confidence I quit my job knowing I could do a lot more if I got my life together. But as time went on, I stopped studying for the LSAT, I stopped looking for jobs, and I kept just doing what I wanted to do. Even this post lacks the nice format (I went back and fixed the format, it was too ugly) and pictures of my older ones since I don't plan on sharing it. Do I lack integrity? If that is the case, now I suddenly see the appeal of religions and believing in God- the concept of always being held accountable to a standard set for you. But that is far gone, I have read too many long words in pretentious texts to believe in God.
What I think it is though, is that I can indeed justify my behaviors to myself, because I am doing what I want to do even if it is not good for me. I have integrity in spades, but the morals I hold myself up to are corrupt. I'm not sure how to rectify this, most likely because I can't honestly tell myself that I need to. Referring back to my second post here, I have optimized my daily autopilot enough to meet the minimum to secure some sort of livelihood in the future. But referring back to my first post, I find myself on the foot of the hill once more.
