Your Integrity Determines Your Destiny

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Our life blesses us with many different situations. Not all of us have the inner depth in understanding the real purpose of taking birth in this lifetime. We learn through lessons or experiences. But one way or the other, it teaches us the true meaning and the purpose of life.

Let me tell you a story that I have read in my childhood.

There was an eminent sculptor living in the heart of Egypt. He was not only famous for his art of sculpting and engraving beautiful designs out of a single rock but he also had eyes that could see the minute faults in the detailing the sculptures as well. Now, there came a time, when he was told to build a temple for the Pharaoh, ruling in that century.

Everybody was quite happy with the decision as the temple will be engraved with the most beautiful designs that the world has ever seen. The sculptor started on, with his work. He worked day and night. He started from sculpting the base of the temple. The temple started getting ornamented with the different scriptures and engravings of the different statues of the Gods and the Goddesses. The common people were quite happy with the outcome. When the sculptor reached the topmost areas of engraving the designs, he started to feel sick. One of the guards was a close friend of his. He climbed up and gave him some water to drink. Seeing him in such condition, he told him, “You have worked a lot over this temple, it has already brightened up, with your touch. You have already completed the topmost part of it as well. There is nothing left to do. Get down and take rest now”.

To this, the sculptor replied, “I am not yet done. Do you see these lines, they need finer detailing to look, just the way I have thought in my mind”.

Listening to his friend’s words, the sculptor went more closely to inspect the lines.

After looking at them, more precisely and closely, he shrugged his shoulder and replied, “You are done. It looks perfect. The Pharaoh and the people won’t come up to inspect the finer lines when the temple gets inaugurated. For them, from down, it will look like a heavenly paradise, every time they view it”.

The sculptor stopped drinking from the vessel, looked towards his friend, and smiled. Then he looked at the lines and told, “They might think that it is heavenly, the Pharaoh might praise me with diamonds and golds. You will hug me with happiness. But amongst all of this contentment and bliss, the thing that will haunt me forever will be the incompleteness of the lines. The Pharaoh and the common people will mark it as the most perfect one but deep inside my soul, I will always feel the incompleteness of it. Even if they fail to recognize my faults. Somewhere, deep inside my heart, my soul will know that I did not do justice to the work, I was allotted with. My work will remain incomplete forever”.

This story is nothing but a soulful situation of what integrity really means. When you are full of integrity, you will have the sense to determine between the right and the wrong, no matter what the other person says to you.

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And if you do not get influenced, that marks the real stature of what you are really made of.

We, humans, have the tendency to say something and do something. It might be due to the circumstances or due to the change of lifestyle. But whatever you choose, it is important to stick to it. You must not fluctuate in your decisions. You cannot move back and forth again and again as that makes you vulnerable and whimsical. You will fall into the trap of indecision.

Change is never the wrong decision. It is the decision that frames your life the way you want to design it. But with the change, you must stay determined and focused to stay to the roots of what you have opted for. It is because if you make a decision and yet move backward or forward, it not only sets a wrong tuning your soul but also hampers the time of your life. With the essence of integrity, you will understand the real reason behind the happenings or the changes that have happened in your life. You will understand that it is what it is. It is what was meant to be.

Our life was never meant to be stagnant, or else, we would have never grown. But with the wheel of change, we must always stay true to ourselves with the changes of life and time. Choose to be faithful to your own self before proving yourself to others.

Your integrity is your power and when you stand in your power, the world is bound to grant you the best things in your life. Wheels of life will keep on changing but with your determination, dedication and integrity, you hold to magic to design the destiny that you want to live with.

If the sculptor would have listened to his friend and given up on the new temple, he has built with so much affection and dedication. His work would have been appreciated by his close friends and others but deep inside, a sense of incompleteness would have always stricken him.

There are situations when you need to let go of the past adventure into a new future. Make sure to carve the best of the future with your soul and integrity so that you stay true to yourself till the end of life.

That is the purpose. Integrity is what makes you human, at the end.