I like moral science from school days. But like many skills, knowledge alone is not enough, you need practice. One can find this mentioned even in Tips for How to Speak.
In India Cricket is famous, in Cricket, India's Sachin Tendulkar is one of the best batsman in the world, when he takes on the best bowling attack in the world it is a joy to watch. Without doubt, Sachin is my favorite player. After watching him play over the years, I know how he places his shots, now bring a street bowler, ask him to bowl at me, when I play, you would find 0.001% of Sachin game in me, it is evident we are not what we see, we are not even what we learn. All the world's knowledge is in palm of our hands for over a decade, internet is prolific, after God and various religions, we should give it to Internet for being Omnipresent. Yet we lack understanding in so many things. We are becoming dumber and dumber, phones and collective intelligence of what we produce does not produce intelligent human rather Large Language Models mimicking very human response. We are still very dumb.
I wrote the above to tell we are dumb so when I say I'm very dumb, you are not surprised, as I made you already dumb as well. When I write about Integrity, that should be dumbest thing to do because I'm not a practitioner. Yet like Sachin's game, it is intriguing and fascinating thing to watch, may be to understand.
Integrity is, like Indian Vedic word Tapas, a penance.
Integrity is all compassing word. Like Love is, love is overloaded with meanings and context, yet, one can create literal magical story around it without issues, I'm talking about Harry Potter, while Voldemort mastered rare skills, he has no use for love, and while Harry inherited few rare skills, his life is filled with relationships filled with... yeah man love!
These are some rare occurrences Love and Integrity to be all compassing, you can create a word like Tao, when translated its called The Way, but the word is loaded with mystic elements to be made it all compassing, there are many overloaded words, and Self-help books shoehorn every kind of moral values inside whatever title they have, so when the book is called Confidence, it will be filled with every kind of values written and rewritten in Confidence aspect, if the book title is Habit, you guessed it, if it is Mindset, same, if it is Focus, same treatment.
But the words Love and Integrity are not shoehorned stuff, they are all encompassing in its original meaning, literally the word Integrity originated from Integer, which is whole. The whole is not a part, it can be considered carrying many parts, if you to divide it. So Integrity carries very high moral values like self-discipline; dichotomy between head, where the knowledge on what to do resides and heart or mind, where the reality of what one is willing to do right now resides, in the person with Integrity both are same, they are fluent in their heads and action, it is natural thing for them, it doesn't matter if the action is taking place in super pressure situation either inside or outside, they are never compelled to do something else. This quality to follow head, when weak willed mind will succumb to follow fun, easy, rewarding (in short term) or less painful path, than to do what one really has to do which for any weak willed person looks like drudge, monotonous, uninteresting, and pain inducing.
Now you may think I have shoehorned stuff like self discipline into Integrity. I think self-discipline itself does not lend any life transforming meaning, it is so abstract and generic, one can write many books on Self-discipline and talk about various values one should integrate. If you see what I did, self-discipline means nothing unless you integrate values, Integrity is what it means.
Integrity is one thing that differentiates success and failure, the success I meant is not universal success, it is success we see it on person with integrity it could be about various aspects of their life, it could be anything from financial to bringing up a child to everyday activities. Integrity brings respect, love and admiration, astonishment on the person who keeps up doing it every single time or day.
The person who has integrity is not really focussed on anything including their own success other than to do what is right right now with their sincere effort, and they don't want to miss doing the right thing every single time, and they are calm when they succeed or fail since their efforts are sincere, and they are relentless in doing the right thing. The right thing is not Buddhist righteousness, it is more on practical right thing one has to do. Integrity comprise of very personal moral values. And many times it will appear selfish and relentless to others who are close to the person with integrity. Others even hate this dogmatic adherence of person with integrity to follow their own dogma.
Integrity is one way street, you can't bring others, you are alone and you keep walking, if you meet others, you say hi, and keep going on, you are really focussed on walking this path, you don't carry baggage, you don't carry success, you actually carry nothing, you are obsessed on trodding the Right way your way till your end meets the end.
Integrity is not about being narcissistic character, where you are obsessed about your goals and every means to achieve it, but doing the right thing your head says, responsibility is part of being integral.
It is almost touching few praised Hindu scripture values like Karma Yoga, where your devotion to work is equated to devotion to God. Same way Lord Krishna in Bhagavad Gita says, do your work, results are mine good or bad.