Monday, August 1, 2011

Integrity, Originality, Character, and Freedom

Integrity is more important than originality.

Faith (perseverance) is more important than creativity and imagination, suffice what Albert Einstein may have trumpeted.

Lady Gaga is the epitome of style-over-substance-as-substance. She is fooling fewer people in her ostentatious endeavor. The "Born This Way" superstar changes every time she performs. What way was she born? Does her astounding creativity permit her to define the real nature of character, of freedom in the individual? Hardly.

It's one thing to be different. It's another thing to be different for the sake of being different, or for the sake of entertaining the fickle masses.

It's one thing to be proud of who you are. It's another thing to change who you are so much that no one knows who you are or what you want people to think that you are proud of to being with.

It is better to stick to something worthwhile, to decide the pace that you want to walk in, to decide to incorporate who you are with what you believe, than to change beliefs as if that constitutes something meaningful or awe-inspiring.

It takes integrity to be something different, all the more so because to be different in the fullest sense means being true to that difference rather than changing it over the long-haul.

Therefore, the goal is no longer how different, varied, or wild I can be, since I will have to settle for ever-changing or change into something which will no longer be unsettling. The goal is to decide what you want to be, whether other people like it, hate it, or imitate it. Be faithful to what you have decided is true, whether it stays popular, becomes dull in the eyes of others, or whithers into offense.

Do not settle for being "Born This Way" or born another way. Choose what you are to become. Be what you believe and stay true to it, no matter what others may say.

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