Last night I came across this statement:
Strengths turn into weaknesses without the other parts of a person to balance them out.
The context of this statement is that when strengths/abilities and character/integrity work together in an integrated fashion, then a person experiences wholeness. Without the character/integrity side of the equation, the balance is thrown off (much like an unsolvable algebraic equation).
The author mentions some examples to help demonstrate his point:
You have known people who love, for example, without the benefit of judgment and reality testing. Or people who are creative, but without the benefit of being structrued or organized. Or those who can be proactive and take risks, but can't delay when they need to. They are impulsive.
And this is the statement that really hit me:
The person of "integrity" is a person of balanced integration of all that character affords.
That made me think about my own behaviors. I have a passion for newness. I like to start new projects (and sometimes would rather have someone else finish them). I like to play a piece of music for the first time...it's much more exciting than after I've played it for the fifth time. I'm impulsive.
Sometimes I lean too heavily on a certain set of strengths, to the exclusion of a more integrated approach, and get myself into trouble (whether relationally, emotionally, spiritually, or professionally).
So here's to non-compartmentalization, but rather integration of strengths, abilities, and integrity.
1 comment:
Ok, so here's the candor...
the theory sounds a bit muddy to me. I haven't quite figured out why exactly, but perhaps its because Cloud speaks of integration from such a qualitative point. A person's "wholeness" is not solely made of intuitive or subjective parts but also of the sequential and objective — regardless of the balance between them. Maybe it's not really "integrity" (because certainly this word comes with its own set of connotations for every individual), but "active learning" in which a person calls upon both the logical and random, the parts as well as the wholes, to do the best he/she can with the tools of his/her own character in each situation presented?
The quantitative point is that "wholeness" is measurable. Most people can identify a distinct preference for styles of thinking and learning — ultimately "seeing." It's a value call: are you right- brained? left-brained? or whole-brained? and who's to say one is better than the other? A self-proclaimed renaissance person, I myself, like to believe that I've set camp up on the whole-brain side, but deep down I may lean a bit to the left...in life, love, and politics.
Maybe it's not muddy, maybe it's just semantics — you be the judge.
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