Beauty is integrity and integrity is Beauty
Integrity means to hold its shape. To be whole.
Our personal integrity is to hold the shape of our unique expression. To not be seduced, cajoled, or terrified into becoming another shape. To not think we have to be this or that to be accepted, liked, loved.
To be fully who we are, while also refining our rough edges that have yet to reconcile with our elemental identity. Our broken and damaged. Our injured and hurt.
Integrity of an enterprise is the same. There is a uniqueness to the Source Idea, the original animating impulse that has us say…we are going to create this…
The idea needs humans and the ecology in which it is born to bring it to life.
Our role as stewards of the idea is to hold the shape of that idea. To not have it become another shape, to not conform to others imposing on the shape, or seeking to clip its wings because of business-as-usual constraints.
Rather instead to imagine ways to bring the idea and its shape, its Pattern Integrity, to life.
Just as it is challenging to do this at the personal level, to be fully true to who we are….it is a challenge at the enterprise level. A whole world of business-as-usual tradition insists that it look like ‘this’ or ‘that.’
Often we make a mistake of taking our beautiful idea, which is in support of a world with a future, and then overlaying it with systems, constructs, and thinking from the very world we are seeking to emerge from.
Like putting petrol in a Tesla, this act will, against our desire, kill the integrity, the shape, of the idea.
Beauty, the intangible, ephemeral quality, is present when integrity is present. Beauty and integrity are pairs, life and eternity partners.
In a world with a future, rather than just measuring the usual..numbers, statistics, profit, GDP growth…we might honour Beauty.
I say honour because Beauty defies measurement. The moment we seek to do this, she, like the wind, disappears and then returns magnified, or transformed.
Imagine a world where love, beauty, joy, reverence, respect, dignity…are all included in our annual report, our daily stats, our feedback, and our nation’s determination of its citizens’ and ecosystems’ well-being.
When we revere Beauty, integrity is present. When integrity is the way, the world becomes more Beautiful.
January 27th 2020
Photo taken January 27th, 2017
