Tuesday, October 16, 2012

An open letter to my son - Part 4

I want you to be true to yourself.  Decide what you value most and then engineer your life around those values.  

If you yearn to be a man of character (which I hope you do and suspect you will), you’ll want to make integrity your #1 value.  Integrity is the value that makes all the other values possible.

Integrity means being honest.  It also means being accountable.  When I was a kid, they talked about the 3 R’s in school (Reading, Riting? and ‘Rithmetic? . . . I think they forgot Spelling in that list because only one of them really starts with R).  There are 3 more important R’s associated with integrity:
1)  Respect for yourself
2)  Respect for others
3)  Responsibility for all your actions.  

It’s about doing what you said you would do, when you said you would do it.  Work hard to keep those promises to others. Learn how to honor the promises you make to yourself.  Enlist others to hold you accountable.  

Bennett, I want your life to be a prosperous one.  But please remember that it’s important that you create a life in which your name (and your legacy) is worth much more than your bank account.  

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. — Samuel Johnson



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