“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.” —Arundhati Roy

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I don’t pay attention to celebrities or celebrity culture. But, if like me, you’re persistent in seeking truths, you will find them even within those circles.

Though I only know little about the two celebrities above — Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, also known as Lady Gaga, and Tupac Amaru Shakur, also known as 2Pac — they’ve shared truths worth heeding to.

I’ve always reflected on the idea of integrity and how best to adhere to it. This is difficult work — to fend off external forces that try to compromise your integrity. But there’s nothing new under the sun. I don’t believe today is any different from the past.

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integrity | ɪnˈtɛɡrɪti | noun [mass noun] 1 the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles: a gentleman of complete integrity. 2 the state of being whole and undivided: upholding territorial integrity and national sovereignty. • the condition of being unified or sound in construction: the structural integrity of the novel. • internal consistency or lack of corruption in electronic data: [as modifier] :  integrity checking.

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I have to admit, as I work towards building things (businesses, for example) to elevate the socio-economic conditions in Africa and West Asia, cleaving to strong moral principles is not easy in a world so full of deception. Projects, initiatives, monies to be dispersed all perpetuate the status quo of exclusion, extraction, power imbalances. It makes it extremely difficult to build long-term, fair, meaningful infrastructure in the face of these. But it’s important to persist and resist these temptations of easy, false money, and false impact.

But if one is to have integrity – i.e. staying true to one self – one must first have a deep understanding of oneself. 

And to understand oneself, begin by asking self-reflective questions:

• What makes me feel alive? 
• What is important to me?
• What am I deeply passionate about?
• How do I feel about injustice? What is injustice?
• What are things I will not tolerate?
• If I participate in this or that, who will benefit? And do I care if the least of those among us are further disadvantaged by this?
• If I have 52 weeks left to live, what will I be doing?

So as you journey through life, it’s vital to ask: What is my truth? Am I ready to sacrifice much in order to cling to my truth?