When I decided earlier yesterday that I would be writing a blog about friendship, I did so thinking that I would be writing about "advice" from friends that they themselves cannot seem to pick true friends. I have a friend, been friends with for years, although honestly I can't tell you that I consider her among my closest friends. A couple weeks back she had told me that some so-called friends of mine and hers had bad mouthed me to her, and her being the straight up redneck that she is, had attempted to make sure that I landed on the bad side of her more volatile side. Suffice to say, she had set them straight. I'm her friend, never done her any wrong, and most importantly, she knew what they had said about me wasn't true. I have to tell you she earned a new level of respect and friendship from me. I hold integrity most important of all in my life. Not that I myself am perfect by any means, but I just find that a person that has a moral backbone is the best of us all. That doesn't actually mean that the people that you come around that never do anything wrong or seemingly wrong are good moral people. That moral backbone often comes in the form of what many people look down upon, like this friend of mine. She doesn't have a degree, no pedigree, not even a high school diploma. She can go all redneck and honestly most guys probably should be afraid of her. She doesn't take any crap off of anyone. Yet, for all that, she has a heart of gold and would never think of wronging someone that never wronged her. No, this blog is not about her, but that unique trait that I hold most dear in friends--integrity.
Integrity is not just the person that has your back. Honestly, I've had "friends" that have no integrity, or maybe not much shall we say? Those types of people are abounding. It takes time to flush some of them out, not so much like birds flushed out for the hunt, more like sh*t down the toilet. Sometimes, we are fortunate that they reveal themselves faster than others. There was an old lady that I thought could be a friend when I first moved home. After 3 outings with her, and three different men degrading me with the exact same words, it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that this old lady was about as trustworthy as Benedict Arnold. Of course, trustworthy is often a relative term. To the British, Benedict Arnold would have been a hero had they won the uprising that we as the victors call the American Revolution. Yet, I've watched this particular piece of work and know that of her "friends" I personally would have no reason to trust any of them. Even a couple of my former friends, I say former because years and years ago we were, that claim to be her friends, well, neither have the moral fiber of saplings, let alone would ever be solid oaks or sequoias. One for example bold faced lied a couple months back to my boyfriend claiming that she had planned my graduation party and had driven me around. The way I remembered it was that she had picked up the cake, could not stick around for my graduation because she had to work the mid-shift at the hospital, and had placed 4 red-headed sluts (a shot for those of you non-drinking types) in the "hole" for me at the sports bar my two closest friends had actually planned the party to start. I had after moving lost track of all 3 of these friends. One I still don't know what happened to her; she was actually the one that had driven me that night. The other was and is one of my best friends. That's what happens when you find someone that is truly a friend. The minute you sit and talk again, even after years, there's nothing lost and even the time lost is minute (yes, that pun is intended). When this friend, one of my best friends, recalled my graduation party, she recalled it to my boyfriend with certain extra details--mainly in the planning--just as I had. Is it important? In the grand scheme of things? In a conversation to most, I would say "no", because many people find such details minor. But such details are the most revealing of all. "It is in the minor details...that the truth emerges."
People reveal who they are without thinking twice about it, but we only see it in the minor details. My friend, the redneck high school dropout, is a great example. Years ago, a friend had said to me in a snubby way that my friendship with such a "type" of person was not a good thing. The conversation that ensued was basically the same I've had over the years with several so-called friends. I am at liberty to choose my friends and this friend was equally at liberty to choose her own friends. Just because not all of her friends were mine and vice versa should not have any bearing on whether she and I were friends. True friends simply don't care that you are not exclusive to them, nor do they try to manipulate you into only having the same friends as they do. The irony in this conversation was that this woman who didn't like my redneck friend had less loyalty in her little pinky, less integrity in her pinky fingernail, and had already been systematically talking behind my back for what could only be accounted for with sheer jealousy. Not sure exactly what she was jealous of, but the green eyed monster is always the first of the monsters people hide behind their faces that rears its ugly head. Worse yet, quite honestly, the only reason she bad mouthed the friend that I speak of is she was jealous of her too. Oh yes, I'm quite aware that she would deny it, but yes, she was. She knew something I didn't. That her heart was much darker than this redneck dropout that she wanted desperately to look down on. No amount of education, no amount of money, no amount of phony friends surrounding her would ever change that.
Do people change? I've seen her since, surrounded by phony friends, and for all intensive purposes looking quite happy. But that's the other thing about people that are genuine versus people who are going through the motions. It's always in the eyes. The jealousy, the ugliness, the hurt, whatever it is that we hide--and we all hide something--comes out from the eyes. She's no more happy than the friend of mine she judged as beneath her, probably even less. Who's fault is that? Her own. I make no qualms that my life has not been a bed of rose petals. The best friend I spoke of earlier, her life has not been a big cotton pillow and Tempur Pedic either. She's going through a lot even now and taking on responsibilities because it's the right thing to do albeit definitely not the easiest. But that's who she is and who she has always been. We can change our education; we can change our lots in life--we truly can. I would really like to believe that those people with no integrity can change that too, but that is who we are on the inside. The saying says "a leopard cannot change it's spots". Nowadays we can go to a plastic surgeon and change everything about ourselves on the outside. Is the heart, the very soul, of a person malleable? Can we become better people?
For the most part, no. It's not the answer anyone wants to hear. Changing the fiber of our being, changing who we are inside, is not even close to as easy as it is for a leopard to change its spots. Is a criminal always a criminal? No. The heart of the person, the circumstances, everything that lead into any decision we make does not define us. Whether we connect to who we truly are is what can have an effect on bad decisions, bad choices, incorrect assumptions. As Michael Jordan said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed." We learn from our mistakes, and we adjust accordingly. Ironically, some people don't even do that. But changing our being, that which we have groomed ourselves, or been groomed into becoming, is far more difficult. Towards the end of his life "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt gave what in current terms of money upwards of $30M USD to help fund a new ministry college that was going to be called Central University. The pitch from a sort of family member about healing the wounds of the Civil War had somehow supposedly won him over. The "Commodore" was notorious as making his millions off the backs of Chinese and Irish immigrants who built the great railroads that turned the Vanderbilts into one of America's first "royal" families. He was not known for his philanthropy by any means. He was by most accounts ruthless, crushing his competitors, bribing government officials...you name it, he was accused of it. Yet, that university in Tennessee ultimately has become one of the foremost educational centers in the United States. Does that change who he was? Why is it towards the end of our lives so many of us all the sudden want to make up for being sh*tty people the rest of the time?
In this day and age, we have forced laws to make people like Cornelius Vanderbilt more honest, less greedy, at least act like better people. While I agree completely with the laws, we must somehow change stepping on people as a means of getting what someone wants. We simply cannot force anyone to be a better person. That amount of work has to come from within and it comes with an acknowledgment that we are not the "good" person we pretend to be. I'll call a spade a spade. I have literally been told on multiple occasions, good bad or indifferent, that I am honest to a fault. Is honesty a fault? Is integrity a fault? Is being true to your word a fault? We like to think that there was a softer, nicer time where men just shook hands and agreed to get stuff done, the right way, the good way, the honest way. There wasn't. Do you think those men of the past created binding contracts with thousands upon thousands of legalese words on paper that diminished forest after forest because of how binding a handshake was? Do you think the Stock Market crash in 1929 was because they always did stuff the "right" way? The "good" way? The "honest" way? I hate to say it, but no. For all the rufflings and rumblings, we are better today than we were then and people like Cornelius Vanderbilt still rise up, get rich and crush the average person under their insatiable greed.
Yet, these are the same people standing around you. The same pool that we each get to choose our friends from. Some of them don't have the stomach to be ruthless as Cornelius Vanderbilt was known to be, so their ruthlessness is limited to the little scope of the people that they encounter. Or perhaps, and this even by my standard is a little too rose-colored glass, we have reached a point where they have started to know better. Integrity. Honor. These are no punchlines to some military recruiting advertisements. Honor, well, frankly it's relative. While I have no love loss for religious extremists that would inflict acts of terror on anyone, their version of Honor versus mine, perhaps even versus the way they were raised is all relative. Honor is defined by the people we allow into our lives, by the creeds that we choose to live by. But Integrity. Integrity is the "quality of being honest and having strong moral principles" but it is also "being whole and undivided". Integrity is that little thing inside of us that we either live with or without. I will not feign to be a "good" person. I am neither "good" or "bad", because as a human being I make mistakes that have had both "good" and "bad" repercussions for myself and for others. But my Integrity I would like to think rivals that fantastic person that I opened this blog with. I would like to think that my true friends would tell you that no matter what I have earned their trust with my Integrity and I can tell you that they have earned mine with theirs. If your friends are not "whole and undivided" in who they are, if they lack the moral fortitude to do what is right when there's little need to do right (keeping in mind we are not talking about the shallow simple picture of legal right nor the religious "right" which unfortunately sometimes are completely in opposition of moral right), then have you chosen the "right" friends? It's a conundrum. You look around and choosing those who will stand by you, genuinely, through better or worse, thick and thin, do right by you when all others urge them to do wrong by you, you can probably look around and see one or two. I suppose I've been blessed moving around so much over the years that I have been lucky enough to find one or two everywhere I have ever been. But when you think about it, really think about it, would you rather have the redneck dropout friend who can always change her education, her means with the moral fortitude of an angel or the seemingly likable, surrounded by "friends", seemingly popular backstabber who wouldn't think twice about selling you upriver for little more than their own entertainment?
I know. It all sounds so high school. But that is where we developed how we deal with other people and where that "education" about others ended--all the assumptions--right or wrong, good or not--were forged there for over half of the population around us. "All we are is all we know." Likewise, all we know is all we are. We choose our friends, and more importantly for most of us, those friends often choose or have far more impact on who we are, who we choose to be. Integrity. I see on Facebook a saying fairly often: "You are the average of the five people that you hang around with." Mull that over for a second. You are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with divided by 5. That's you, that's me, that's any of us, in a nutshell. Integrity. Is that in one, two or all five? If not, perhaps you are comfortable with that. I'm not judging you if you're comfortable with that. I personally don't like pulling knives out of my back, so if a moral backbone isn't one of those things you hold dear, we're probably not that good of friends. I'm just saying that if you choose to overlook those things, like moral fortitude, in your friends and you're not living the Lifestyles of the Rich and the Famous, why are you giving up your soul, your Integrity? To be liked? Hilarious or pathetic. You choose.
No comments:
Post a Comment