Is Your Integrity For Sale?

I was 21 years old and felt like I was on top of the world. Several months earlier I had packed up my jeep and set out on a quest that would change my life. Having returned successful, I was now preparing for the greatest adventure of my young life. To put it mildly, I was full of eager anticipation and excitement.

But wait, I am getting ahead of the story. So, allow me back up a bit and fill in a few details. I had dropped out of college and was working for a big construction company doing custom interiors on high rise buildings in Los Angeles In September of ‘72, with a thousand dollars in my pocket, I loaded up my jeep and went north in search of my own personal promised land.

My quest had a purpose

I left with the intention of locating and securing property in the forests of southern Oregon. I spent a glorious two months camping in remote areas, and trying to let myself be led in the direction of my vision. I knew where I belonged, I just needed to find it. Well, guess what…

I did find it, and everything came together like clockwork. Soon, I was on my way back to southern California to get ready for the big move. After having lived in the woods for two months, I found it almost impossible to venture back to work in the big city. Finally, I was so broke that I had no choice. I finally went back to work and began cleaning up loose ends so I could leave in the spring.

Everything was just perfect

One Friday afternoon I was working, but my mind was elsewhere. I was looking forward to the weekend and running on autopilot, dreaming of the new life that awaited me. On that particular afternoon I was using a tool called a ramset. It uses 22 blanks to shoot steel pins into concrete.

Now, to operate this tool required a special license, which I had. It also required safety glasses, which I had, but wasn’t wearing. Can you see where this is going? Let’s look at the facts. I knew what I was doing, but wasn’t paying attention. I needed eye protection, but wasn’t wearing any. The scene was set for… 

Wham, I was hit in the eye by flying concrete

Now I was paying attention, but it was too late. Somehow, I had flown clear across the room and was laying on my back, holding my eye. I had a feeling it was bad. Then a workmate ran over and said: “Let me see your eye.” His next words were no comfort at all. He said: “OMG don’t move, I’ll get the foreman.”

Can you feel the tension of that moment? Even though it probably only took a few minutes for them to return, it seemed like hours. I had a lot of time to ponder the situation. I was thinking how stupid I was to not wear those safety glasses. I was wondering if I would lose the eye. And I was too scared to move my hand off my eye to find out if I could see.

My integrity was about to be tested

When they returned, the foreman responded very quickly. He looked at my eye, ran to the tool box, grabbed the safety goggles, and said: “Which eye is it, I’ll poke a hole in the safety goggles and you will never have to work again. You can sue their butts off and you’ll be rich.”

Ever notice how tests of our integrity usually come to tempt when the chips are really down? All of a sudden I had a choice to make, and it needed to be made fast. If I went with his plan, I would probably get a big insurance settlement, which would have been justified if the goggles had failed. But there was a problem! The safety goggles weren’t to blame, it was my own negligence.

Sometimes integrity costs!

In this case, being honest would mean taking personal responsibility for my predicament, even if it cost me my eye and a big insurance settlement. Everyone standing around, including my boss, was telling me to take advantage of the moment. What would you do in a situation like this? Think about that for a minute. What would you do?

Some people feel that it’s okay to take advantage of insurance companies. They feel that a different standard applies when it comes to big corporations. Kind of an integrity sliding scale. How do you feel about that? Should we play by different rules when it’s a faceless mega company? These are good questions to ask ourselves ahead of time.

So, what did I do?

I told the foreman not to mess with the goggles. I knew there was a valuable lesson in this experience. I also figured that if I didn’t learn it then, there might be an even higher price to pay down the road. They took me to an eye doctor who told me that the whole eye was filled with blood and looked like a red golf ball. He said that the blood needed to clear before he could asses the damage. That would take about two weeks.

I spent the next two weeks with a patch on my eye, waiting and wondering. You know, I never did lift that patch up to see what the eye looked like, I just waited.

The day of reckoning

As it turns out, when there is an injury, the body responds by rushing nutrients to the affected area. That sounds good, right? Unfortunately, one of those nutrients is calcium, and too much calcium in the eye can be a problem. As a result of the accident, I now had what’s called a trauma cataract. It looked like a white map of the United States on the lens inside my eye. My eye was fine, but the vision had gone from 20/20 to 20/400. I could see blurry shapes and colors, but that was about all.

When you lose the vision in one eye it has a dramatic effect on your depth perception and sense of balance. It took some time to adjust to these changes, but we are incredibly adaptive creatures. I challenged my mind to find new ways to triangulate, and it responded. Eventually, I was even able to fly airplanes, although landing is difficult when you can’t judge distance accurately. But that’s a story for another day. Let’s get back to…

Maintaining integrity

No matter who we are, our integrity will be tested. Look around and you will quickly notice that the integrity of many has been bought and paid for. When they were tested, they sold out. Their integrity was for sale and someone or something met their price. That’s a personal choice, but my advice is DON’T DO IT! Once you lose your integrity it’s a difficult thing to get back.

Yes, keeping mine cost me a potential windfall, but that’s a shortsighted viewpoint. What we gain in the long run for standing by our values and ethics if something worth more than money. You can sell your integrity, but you can’t buy it back. Integrity is a personal treasure that seems to be in very short supply these days. Self-respect and integrity go hand in hand. Remember that when circumstances ask – is your integrity for sale?

How important is integrity to you?
Has your integrity ever been tested?
The lines are open!

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