On Values and Integrity

I’ve been in constant contemplating mode this year. I’ve always been a thinking creature but lately one question keeps on popping in my head: Am I really the person I’d like to think I am? 

People have facade, especially in this digital era with its in-your-face social perception engineering. While I did not consider that having facade as something that should be criminally prohibited, I began to wonder whether some people started to believe their own hype. We have this perfect image on how we’d like to be seen by our contemporaries but on the other hand we’re obliged to leave little space of reason in our head. It would be so pathetic to be tricked by our own social fabrication.

Amidst the multi-layered facade, it begs a question on how to judge one’s true character? How do you define a person? 

I believe that a person is defined not by the way he deals in good times, but by how he overcomes in times of trouble. Tough period tends to push anyone on the edge and more often than not, he breaks. It’s easier to wise up when things are rosy and less so when there are thorns on your heels. One would begin to wonder whether it’s not wrong to compromise for the sake of getting real. What was begun as a one-off, isolated action suddenly turned into a recurring deed. The recurrence slow turned into a habit and the habit turned into a modus operandi. One day one woke up in the morning and totally forgot about the person he thought he was.

This is where I put values and integrity above anything else to assess one’s character. Values and integrity are not something that could be taken as face value. There has to be a synchronized rhythm between what is said and what is done. Words are meaningless without action as much as flowery perfumed speech cannot disguise the stinks from a rotten personality.

Things are never black and white in this world and it is true that relativity is the best friend of reality. That’s why it’s almost impossible to judge anyone without reading between the lines where the values of a person lie in. You’ll never find values and integrity at the end of the production line. It’s not a product because values and integrity are the means of production. Goods that are produced without values are damaged because they’re not something that people can believe in. They might be worth of certain economic amount, but by being void of principal values, their reach is limited and their longetivity is shortened.

Pramoedya’s immortal words that one has to be adil sejak dalam pikiran heavily resonates with me because adil sejak dalam pikiran is the mandatory precursor to adil dalam perbuatan.

I hope that it’s not just a wishful thinking that I haven’t drifted too far away from the person I’d like to think I am.