Honorable Mention

I love Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. It’s something I revisit every year.

Not because I forget its lessons, but because I change. The book stays the same; I don’t. Each time I return to it, different lines feel underlined by my life rather than by ink. What once read like discipline now reads like patience. What once felt like restraint now feels like care.

What’s always struck me is how unceremonious it is. These weren’t words meant for an audience. They were reminders written by someone trying to live well while carrying responsibility, ambition, fear, and temptation — all at once. There’s comfort in that. It makes the pursuit of integrity feel less like an achievement and more like a practice.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about honor and integrity — not as ideals, but as lived experiences. What do those words actually mean in a world where success often comes from finding edges? Where efficiency is rewarded more than reflection? Where it’s easy to convince yourself that the ends justify the means, especially when the ends look good on paper?

Ancient traditions spoke about honor and simplicity not because life was pure, but because it was complicated. Monks didn’t deny desire or ambition — they acknowledged them and chose to live deliberately anyway. They understood something we often resist: being human means holding competing impulses at the same time.

I don’t believe integrity means rejecting desire, ambition, or darkness. That feels unrealistic. There is a real shadow in all of us — impatience, ego, hunger, the pull toward shortcuts. Marcus Aurelius wrote about this plainly. Not to shame it, but to stay aware of it. You can’t govern what you refuse to name.

For a long time, I thought being a “good man” was about attracting the right people. Be thoughtful, honest, disciplined — and the rest would follow. What I learned instead is that goodness attracts everyone. Including people who misunderstand it, test it, or treat it as something endlessly available.

That realization matures the question.

Not how do I be good so others see it,
but how do I be good in a way that sustains me?

How do I live with a sense of integrity that isn’t dependent on approval or outcomes? One that holds whether I’m building a business, loving someone deeply, or sitting alone with my thoughts?

I think integrity shows up less in grand moments and more in ordinary ones. In how you speak when it would be easier not to. In whether your private decisions align with your public values. In choosing long-term trust over short-term advantage. In becoming someone who doesn’t need to adjust their character depending on the room.

What I want, more than anything, is coherence.

The same person across contexts. Not perfect — just consistent. A life that doesn’t require explanation or compartmentalization. A sense that who I am with others matches who I am with myself.

These conversations — the real ones — don’t happen loudly. They happen slowly. Over time. Among people who have learned that peace isn’t found in winning every exchange, but in knowing where you stand. People who understand that integrity compounds quietly, and that the most meaningful partnerships — in business, in love, in family — are built on shared pace and shared values.

Is this something everyone struggles with?
Or is it simply something many people feel but rarely say out loud?

I don’t know.

What I do know is that there’s a difference between living convincingly and living truthfully. Between appearing aligned and actually being so. And once you notice that difference, it becomes hard to ignore.

An interesting paradigm…

Not recognition.
Not moral superiority.
Not arrival.

Just the quiet commitment to keep choosing honesty — even when it’s inconvenient, even when it costs something, even when no one is keeping score.

To live in a way that makes sense to you.
To remain intelligible to yourself.

And to trust that, over time, others who care about the same things will recognize it — not because you said it, but because you lived it.