The word for today is Congruence…
Wikipedia says “In psychology, congruence could be defined as rapport within oneself, or internal and external consistency, perceived by others as sincerity or certainty.” I have been following the story of Anthony Weiner as I am sure many of you are and it shows how important congruence is. We have lots of examples where congruence is violated and sometimes we struggle to define how we perceive a lack of congruence but like a lot of things, we know it when we see it.
Some well known examples are King David with Bathsheba, Bill Clinton with Monica, Larry Craig in the airport restroom and a whole bunch more. I have heard many folks interviewed that have raised the old ‘private vs public’ life and what he does in private does not affect what he does in public. Well, I guess it does. We all know it does and I suspect the only folks who bring that up and the ones that agree with a world view and political view.This whole thing is now being played as a distraction and even those that agree with him in government are calling for Weiner to resign.
We all have agendas. We all have biases. We think we know right from wrong but sometimes it’s hard to define. I think the goal should be congruence. To make the outside person match the inside person. To tell the whole story and do your best to make it the whole truth. Even if we disagree on right and wrong, congruence would prevent us from lying. Weiner lied, Clinton lied, heck, they all lied. Trying to cover up the inside story and make it look like they had done nothing wrong. If you did not do anything wrong then why do you lie?
The idea of honor, integrity and congruence seems so foreign to us sometimes, but it’s lack is so obvious in our political leaders. I don’t have to agree with what our leaders do. I am much closer to a Libertarian than I am anything else so my views really are open to a lot of things but what I want most is to know that what they think and do match. It gives me the chance to decide if I agree with them or not. To decide if I want to vote for them or not based on what they might do. A lack of integrity in our personal lives has to carry over into our public lives. We don’t have two lives. We have ONE life. We need to recognize that our bias carries over. Our world view carries over into all parts of our lives. When they don’t match it comes off as a lack of sincerity.
Be on the outside what you are on the inside. Telling the truth is much simpler than lying anyway. You don’t have to remember the story you told if it’s the truth. You can just tell the story.
I am going to stop the rant for now but I felt like I had to get this off my chest.
Thanks for listening.
Jerry Robertson
PS. login and leave a comment if you like. I would love to see a discussion on this one.