Integrity - Weighed, measured and I’m found wanting…

I measure every Grief I meet

With narrow, probing, eyes –

I wonder if It weighs like Mine –

Or has an Easier size. - Emily Dickinson

 In a way all measurements are our observations – compared. 

Science creates agreed-upon standards and methods of third-person observations for further comparisons.   

This works well with objects but in my experience, humans don’t like being weighed, measured, categorised and ranked. Maybe I dislike social comparison for fear of being found lacking in some way?

These feelings of lack, in turn, motivate the need for evaluation, to prove that I have what it takes. So does my aspiration to be more than I am.  

But I know that if I climb the social ladder, I simply raise the level of comparison. Satisfaction will remain out of reach. 

Sometimes comparison can be so paralysing that I can’t even start to climb the proverbial ladder… In my film student days, I compared my output with that of Tarkovsky, Bergman, Fassbinder and Herzog. This left me with major feelings of inadequacy. Did I use the wrong standard or metric to measure my achievement? As William Blake said:

“I must create a system, 

Or be enslaved by another Man’s;

I will not Reason and Compare,

My business is to Create.” 

What if, instead of ‘hating’ on measurement, I approach it with an attitude of curiosity and creativity.

Am I the object being measured by life?

Or (and)


Am I the instrument measuring life?

As an instrument, can I gather various readings as accurate as possible, without pre-concluded judgements?  

Can I become the tuning fork, the x-ray or telescope capturing the astounding array of everyday phenomena? Am I not the aperture ring with attentional control of how much light I let in? 

 Then just as one clock is set according to other clocks… could I, through dialogue, calibrate my inner sense of measurement with yours (and vice versa), to see what hangs together - coherently.

What if, instead of a life of compliance, I choose one of attunement? 'Measures' I live by, formed out of a mode of participation with life and our shared environment.

A life of Integrity means for me, nothing, no learning nor schooling could add to the fact that I am already part of the whole shebang…

 Can we gather our thoughts, feelings, reasons and intuitions as instrumental readings, not to persuade and compare who is right but rather to share a sense of our common humanity? If I am interested in a life of integrity, wholeness, truth and authenticity, then it cannot, by definition, be fragmented, isolated and divided from yours, right?

Join me for a dialogical learning experiment this August 2021:

Click the link -->Wayfinding Conversations

The aim is to heal some of our fragmented states of mind-hearts and gather some moral sanity if possible, a kind of collective wisdom inquiry towards shared living solutions.