Integrity is not simply the absence of wrongdoing but the alignment between professed values and actual behavior — the condition in which what you say you believe and what you do in private and under pressure are the same thing. Most people have a higher opinion of their own integrity than their behavior under stress warrants, which is not hypocrisy so much as the gap between the self we aspire to and the self we are under conditions that test that aspiration. The examined life does not require perfection; it requires honest accounting of the gap and the continuing effort to close it.
Juana