Moral and ethical principles don’t always provide us with that sense of control, whether internal or external, when we are faced with challenging situations. The flight or fight response, the repetitive response we have to trauma, signals our brains that we have to survive. It doesn’t give us the time to contemplate integrity or sit with our powerlessness in any given moment.
Whatever we do to control any given situation when we are threatened might always feel like we are doing the “right” thing because we are trying to keep ourselves safe. Our challenges lose sight that we might be fighting for our beliefs because fighting for our survival usurps anything else. We believe that we are in integrity because we then relate integrity to feeling safe, in control and in power. I wonder how many of us can equate powerlessness with integrity? I wonder how many of us even want to try? It’s hard when we are engrossed in a world where we correlate our identities individually and collectively with having power. We experience this in every facet of society.
Integrity is one of the most potent forms of empowerment I have ever personally known and witnessed, especially in the face of undeniable powerlessness.