What is Integrity?
Integrity is demonstarted by people who do the right thing, no matter what the circumstances may be. (It is doing) the right thing even if it isn't going to be easy for me or for others.
I gave this them to my students to reflect on and one of them (his name's Charles, I won't give his full name though) gave a wonderful reflection on integrity and character. I am uploading it without any editing. I chose to upload it here for two reasons:
1.) it is an original done by a freshman high school student and not just ripped off from the web; and
2.) it incorporates a story that was in the news a few days back. (part of our curriculum is to tackle news items)
Here is the reflection and I hope you get inspired by it and to further reflect on it, try answering the questions he poses at the end yourself. Whenever I hear these reflections, I get to affirm my belief that today's generation can still be depended on to help the Philippines out of its rut. Here it is:
Today I am going to give a reflection on character and integrity. The dictionary defines character as being a distinctive mark or quality, or the complex of mental and ethical traits making a person. Integrity, however, refers to your adherence to a code of values. I believe that you need to possess a good, strong character to have integrity. It all depends on your attitude towards life, and your passion to do good.
2 days ago, I saw a news feature on 2 high school boys who had found P100,000. They could have easily just kept the money, since they happened to be poor, but they chose to return it anyway. This story is a perfect example of integrity, doing the right thing no matter what the circumstance. Having integrity means sticking to your values even if there is a great temptation to do the wrong thing. All of us should strive and work hard to live out these values in our daily lives. We should try to develop a strong character, with good moral values, and to have the integrity that goes with it, for we should never lose our integrity.
Last year, our Filipino teacher told us this story about her former student who tried to kill himself just because his girlfriend broke up with him. In the end, our teacher advised us not to follow this person’s example. We should accept our problems and move on, for if we lose our integrity, it will become very difficult to get it back. As I end my reflection, I would like to ask you these questions:
- Do I always strive to do the right thing no matter what?
- If I always give in to temptation, what can I do to build up my integrity so that this can be avoided?
No comments:
Post a Comment