Integrity

Be truthful—to others and to yourself

Your friend says, "I got us tickets to this concert." You say, "Well, I don't know..." Your friend says, "Hey, I got them specially for us to go together. Come on...I'll pick you up at 7." You don't want to go, but you don't know how to refuse. You feel obligated, so you say "yes," when you would rather say, "no."

What happened here? Your friend had all the free choices, (he decided to go to the concert, he chose you as a companion, and he purchased the tickets), and he made these choices without consulting you. You can feel that familiar "glitch" in your stomach as you struggle with the question... should you take a chance and hurt your friend's feelings by saying "No?" You cannot bring yourself to do that, so you sacrifice your own integrity.

Integrity: When you tell the truth as you experience it, you have integrity. Some of the synonyms are: honor, principle, dignity, honesty, virtue, reliability. It feels good to have integrity. But every time you say, "Yes," when you mean "No," you are "out of integrity" with yourself. You have to then live with the guilt or bad feelings. Furthermore, when you agree to an unwanted favor, you obligate yourself to that person even more: since you agreed once to something you didn't want to do, you will probably agree the next time. It gets harder and harder to tell the truth, which will compromise your self-esteem as well as the friendship.

Sometimes a teenager will have to do things s/he doesn't want to do because a person in authority has requested that these things must be done. It's important to discern whether what is being asked is fair and within ethical and moral boundaries.