Remember when a handshake sealed the deal? Back when someone said, “I’ll call you,” and they actually did—instead of ghosting like Houdini after a bad blind date? Integrity used to be the baseline, not the bonus feature. Now it feels as rare as finding Tupperware with its lid on the first try.
We’ve gotten so comfortable with shortcuts that keeping your word seems old-fashioned, like rotary phones and mailing hand written letters. But integrity isn’t extinct—it’s just… misplaced.
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Why I’m Calling It an Act
People say “the art of integrity,” but let’s be real: art is admired from afar, framed, and hung on a wall where it looks nice but does nothing. Integrity isn’t a museum piece—it’s an act. It’s the choices we make when no one’s clapping, no one’s looking, and no one’s handing out gold stars.
It’s not talent. It’s not a personality trait. It’s that gut-check decision: Do I stand true, or do I take the easy out?
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What Integrity Looks Like
Keeping Your Word. If you said 5, don’t show up at 6 with a frappuccino in hand and think whipped cream covers lateness.
Owning Your Mistakes. If you shrank someone’s favorite sweater in the wash, tell them. Don’t just casually hand them a crop top and say, “It’s retro.”
Consistency. Be the same person everywhere. Don’t play the saint on Sunday and then cut people off in traffic on Monday while offering out hand gestures.
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What Happens When It’s Missing
Without integrity, trust collapses like a badly made soufflé. Relationships wobble. Your word becomes as reliable as a gas station hot dog after midnight. So here’s the kicker: when integrity slips, even your mirror side-eyes you.
Lack of integrity leaves collateral damage—broken trust, fractured friendships, workplaces full of side-eye. It creates a world where people are guarded, braced for disappointment, instead of open to connection.
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Standing True Again
The good news? Integrity is revivable. We don’t need it to trend—we need it to live. Every time you keep a promise, confess a mistake, or stay solid when it would’ve been easier to bend, you’re breathing life back into a world starving for it.
Integrity doesn’t shine in the spotlight, but it glows in the shadows where no one’s watching. It’s the lost act of standing true. When you stand true, even in the quiet, you become someone people can lean on without hesitation. A thing that sticks with others.
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So here’s to the promise-keepers, the apology-givers, the “I’ll bring your Tupperware back” doers (even if it takes a month). Here’s to the small, unseen acts of integrity that rebuild trust, create unity, and keep our hearts from veering off-course.
The world may not clap when you stand true, but heaven surely does, and that applause echoes longer than any standing ovation. But hey—at least when you stand true— you won’t be remembered as the neighbor who swore they’d water the plants, and came back home to a funeral for three dead ferns and one very bitter basil plant.
“Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” – C.S. Lewis
“The time is always right to do what is right.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.” – Albert Einstein
“Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.” – Thomas Jefferson
“What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Integrity… like my houseplants, won’t survive if I keep neglecting it. But unlike plants, the world can’t afford for us to let this one wither away. So, until next time— stay true, stay sane, and don’t be the neighbor responsible for a hanging basket homicide.
In love and grace,
Tina Campbell | Scribed In Light
Scribed In Light 
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