A Matter of Principle: Got it together?

By QAROL PRICE

At age seven, before I knew the name for it, I experienced a sort of glitch in the Matrix.

It was one of those stunning moments that stayed forever etched in my memory. You might say it was a bewildering “a-ha” moment. It happened one morning in my secondgrade classroom.

Students were working quietly at their desks on math problems the teacher had written on the chalkboard. It was so quiet you could hear the birds chirping through the closed windows.

Then, from out of the dull silence ripped a ghastly expletive: “Oh, #@*%!” The epic moment was quickly followed by an eruption of gasps and giggles as all eyes landed on the teacher who had sprung to her feet dripping of coffee. Before she could say anything, a boy in the back of the class reacted immediately to her vulgar tongue.

“Hey, how come you can swear but we get in trouble if we do it?” I expected her to pull the “grown-up card,” but her actual response was, “Do as I say, not as I do.”

Well! She might as well have flipped us off! Instead of admitting her mistake or apologizing for it, she professed this double standard. I guess it was “Rules for thee but not for me.”

Soon after, I learned the name for this glitch of logic. It is known as hypocrisy. But to be fair, our poor humiliated teacher just had herself a momentary lapse. No need to call her a hypocrite. It was just a moment in time when she couldn’t keep it together and “lost it.”

A momentary loss of integrity. Yes, this was a two-for-one object lesson at our teacher’s expense. (And we thought we were just learning math!) This incident, all those years ago, has in a small way helped me understand what integrity is.

Your words should be consistent with your actions. You should “walk the talk,” or “put your money where your mouth is.”

When these things are in alignment, they are integrated into a whole, making it “wholesome,” complete. When our body (actions), mind (beliefs) and soul (will) are in agreement – that’s integrity. When they are not in agreement – we dis-integrate.

It is certainly prudent to be mindful of how well we are walking our own talk – everything starts with minding ourselves. But it is also our duty to keep an eye on the major-league hypocrisies that affect us all. We should not tolerate, for instance, the actions of leaders who would dictate policies that they themselves do not follow. But it comes full circle! If we gripe about their lack of integrity while lacking it ourselves, guess what? We are doubly hypocritical!

I doubt you can say it better than the sage Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj did: “You must attend to the way you feel, think and live. Unless there is order in yourself, there can be no order in the world.”

⋆ Next Month: Courage

Qarol Price is a writer and educator. She has taught philosophy to children in Johnston County Public Schools and in Harlem in New York City. She is a resident of Selma.