Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy—ideas meant to be lived. Each month, we explore a new theme and examine what it demands of our lives.
This month we’re exploring integrity.
Welcome to Sweet Bites, Mind Candy’s bite-sized newsletter with thought-provoking finds to send you into the weekend with.
🍰 Mini Bites of the Week
🍰 Story:
In ancient times, the word character was used in reference to a deep indentation pressed into a soft material such as wax, clay, or stone. It was an engraving, a mark made through force.
We can think of moral character in the same way. Our daily choices are the chisel used to make our mark.
Each decision we make—to be honest when lying is easier, to do the hard work when quitting is so tempting—is the same as us swinging the mallet. Small deviations accumulate even when we don’t think they matter. Each action, each response, help cuts a groove, builds a shape, and forms who we are to become.
Integrity comes from the Latin word “integer” meaning whole. It is what keeps us structurally intact, aligning our values with external actions. When the two don’t match, the structure begins to crack.
When we play a role for the sake of public consumption, when we forget that is an act and not an authentic conviction, we hand the chisel to the world. We give up our autonomy and allow outside forces to make our mark, to build our character in their image rather than our own.
Over time, the individual self fractures. Our identity is no longer ours, it takes on the appearance of someone we don’t fully recognize.
Heraclitus’s famous line of character is destiny is true not because of predestined fate, but because the decisions we make today dictate who we are tomorrow.
Every decision we make is another strike of the mallet. And with each strike, the impression on the wax that is our lives deepens and forms who we will become.
🍰 4 Quotes on this week’s topic
C.S. Lewis
“Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before.”
—
William James
“We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never-so-little scar.”
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Michel de Montaigne
“Have you been able to meditate and manage your life? You have performed the greatest work of all.”
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Plutarch
“…a slight thing like a phrase or a jest often makes a greater revelation of character than battles where thousands fall.”
🍰 3 Reflections from me:
I.
Small compromises seem small only because we view them in isolation. Zoom out to the larger whole of our lives, and we see the pattern, and its impact.
II.
If we need to realign our lives, we don’t need a big change. We need to recommitment, today, to act in accordance with what we said we believed in.
III.
Integrity is the refusal to allow our public self and private one to grow too wide apart.
🧠 This Week in Mind Candy 📚
🧘🏻 Monday Meditation:
🦉 Wednesday Wisdom:
👀 This Week’s Recommendations
📰 Article Worthy of a Read: Making It Whole by Seth Godin
🔑 Key Takeaway: “The way we show up will rarely be perfect. But perfect isn’t the point. Countless tiny decisions add up to a whole. It helps to be clear about the purpose of the work we’re here to do.”
📖 Book on Weekly Theme: Sick Souls, Healthy Minds by John Kaag
🔑 Key Takeaway: “…everything can be stripped from a person except his or her free response to the horrible situation into which he or she has been thrown.”
🎥 Video to Watch: The following video is of Mark Manson discussing the importance of lying to ourselves less.
🔑 Key Takeaway: “You have lied to yourself and tried to justify and obfuscate as a way to escape from the difficult decision, and you’ve started to layer all of these different compensatory mechanisms on top and stories that you’ve told yourself.”
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Until next time,
D.A. DiGerolamo
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