Forty days and forty nights
Here is the test. Your dream opportunity arises….that thing you have visualised your entire life. There it is, on a plate, in front of you.
The catch….to take it you must violate your integrity, even minutely.
What do you do?
I am not religious, however religious texts often have seeds of wisdom. The parable of forty days and forty nights in the desert is one such story. The temptations kept arriving…all the glamour, the feasting. To stand in your integrity against the offerings is the lesson.
No wonder our children are depressed. They see their leaders and parents stand on platforms of righteousness. Often holding religious texts against their chests.
Yet their words and actions are Universes apart.
An icon of justice for all genders and races, the very person who laid the stones for women to become equal citizens, requests on her deathbed for her position to be filled after an election a mere month away.
A woman, claiming to be of faith, cares not for this request, seeing only opportunity, egged on by the very people who swore, again touting faith, that they would never do this.
That this woman is even considered someone of justice is beyond my comprehension. Absent all respect, seizing an opportunity, demonstrating her own lack of integrity to her elder.
The list of corruption in our democracies has become so regular that we, the people, are shell-shocked. Numbed out.
Integrity is a daily commitment. When we fall down, when we make mistakes, to own it, pay the price, learn the lesson, and grow up. It is hard hard work.
Our children are depressed in part because they see us behaving like children. Pointing fingers of blame at anyone or everyone. Never doing the hard work of being responsible. Greedy for the spoils. Willing to cross their Rubicon of integrity for personal profit.
And those few leaders who show up, day after day, making seriously tough decisions, answering every question, maintaining their dignity and respect for others, get trashed.
Forty days and forty nights….one hundred days and one hundred nights…a thousand days and a thousand nights…
We get to choose.
Photo taken October 25th 2020
