Editor’s note: The original version of this column was published Dec. 30, 2006.
In my formative years, my father frequently explained the significance behind the words character and integrity.
I was late into elementary school when the colonel’s indoctrination began. It must have been the various hardships of his own youth intertwined with a career of military service that urged him to advocate for living an honorable life.
His efforts had little, if any, impact through my teen years. I suppose my absorption with the magnificence of radiant selfhood served to prevent his message from penetrating too deeply. After all, there were far too many girls to impress and balls to catch and throw, not to mention a dawning horizon that reflected only the uniqueness of me.
Still, Rue B. Masterson, who survived World War II and Korea, refused to surrender when it came to pounding the meaning of these words into his children’s lives.
“Son, a person’s only as trustworthy as his or her word. It’s not about the body. Treat others the way you want to be treated. Show compassion for the less fortunate. Be honest with yourself and with others.”
Yet what did I hear back then? “Blah, blah, blah.”
Thus the wasted days of youth raced past. Then came the mid-20s and the responsibilities of a wife and infant son. I recalled the echoes of Dad’s mentoring about the time he was laid to rest in Harrison’s Maplewood Cemetery. After all those years, I had lived long enough to appreciate what he had tried so diligently to bequeath.
As I became a journalist in constant search of bits and pieces of truth, I also began to see the terrible consequences of violating one’s own character and integrity. No longer was this planet’s sole purpose my needs, my comforts and my immediate gratification. I also recognized that the truth, in all phases of life, can never be fully crushed or permanently buried.
I encountered a homeless alcoholic who’d spent three summers living inside a giant hollow log, and interviewed an impoverished single mother of four abandoned by her husband. There was a widow living in a squalid home without utilities. I visited jails and prisons and halfway houses. Everywhere I witnessed the results of life’s circumstances and insincerities. They stemmed from many causes, including deviations from truth, poor choices and the loss of integrity and character.
The weight of my own responsibilities had caused me to recognize that most of our human struggles were not created by our flexing our muscles, but rather by the choices about whether to do so.
I saw that we resort to needless retaliation in defense of overly sensitive egos and the outright lies that we so easily tell ourselves and others. We fail to realize that, in making purely physical decisions, we often brutalize the most significant aspects of our spiritual integrity.
The indefinable power that with a slap on our rump breathes consciousness into what otherwise would be an inanimate lump of meat is the same infinite force that instills these nobler traits for which my father lobbied so strenuously. This sets us apart from lower-functioning animals with the self-respect, compassion, devotion to truth and the reverence we display for our mutual value as fellow human beings, regardless of social or financial status.
Whenever we choose to violate the principles inherent in this force, we invariably pay the price, as surely as if we reject the principles of gravity. Invariably, each falsehood we attach to the essence of our being tells others something about our deepest nature.
Dad understood that every instance in which he sacrificed bits of the sacred stuff of his self for personal advantage, he knowingly abandoned his obligation to intellectual honesty within his own spirit.
Now, I wince whenever I recognize my many shortcomings. The unheeded wisdom delivered all those years ago, by a father who obviously possessed the same comprehension at a similar stage of his existence, today rings all too clear in his son.
This process we call a physical lifetime, lasting anywhere from a single moment to a century, transpires as in the flash of a firefly’s tail. All that lingers to prove that any of us existed are the remnants of what we believed in, stood for and left in the hearts and minds of those who remain to interact.
So here’s a salute to you, Colonel. Your frustrations during the deaf and blind era of my life were not in vain, although you never lived long enough to realize the impact of your efforts.
Today, with lies deemed acceptable and corruption thriving in boardrooms and the bureaucracies, the challenge has fallen upon my shoulders and yours, valued readers. It comes at a time in the history of these United States when the need to explain and demonstrate character and integrity to the generation still in childhood and generations yet unborn never has been more crucial.
Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist, was editor of three Arkansas dailies and headed the master’s journalism program at Ohio State University. Email him at mmasterson@arkansasonline.com.