Being for Seeming…

Ralph Waldo Emerson included the phrase “Being for Seeming bravely barter” in one my favorite poems.

Like faith and fidelity, integrity really doesn’t flex its muscles until it is under fire.

One of my students recently defined integrity as “who you are when the doors are closed and no one is watching you”.

I had to choose recently who I am when no one’s looking. I was forced to that choice by bad decisions, dissatisfaction and a hunger for more – pretty pedestrian stuff, really. If I had chosen one way, a great many things I’ve wanted for longer than is wise could have been mine. If I had chosen the other, that hunger goes unsated and dissatisfactions, difficulties and consequences settle in for the winter.

But, come snowy season, I’d rather be a right man than seem a right man.

Take a seat by the fire, Fellas…it’s going to be a cold one.