Integrity

I was waiting with my Dad inside Tire Barn as he was getting the tires on his 05 Jetta rotated. Typically a 40 minute wait. There's not enough time to leave the store and yet too much time to avoid an awkward situation. We wasted time looking at wheels and tires and debating how much of an improvement new wheels would be for my car. At $149 per wheel, I could care less about an upgrade, but my dad is more finesse minded. As a child of the 60's he was deeply amused that Hot Wheels had their own brand of wheels with their logo imprinted in the center. "Yeah Dad, that's really neat".

So that took up half an hour. Damn, ten minutes left. Ten minutes of nothingness. We found stools inside the waiting room that faced the window into the garage. I watched as the workers took dad's tires off and toyed with their socket wrenches. I was suddenly aware of the differing levels of productivity the tire rotators were on from me. Here I am, about the same age as the men in the garage, with enough time to spare to wait with my Dad while they're in the midst of a 9 hour shift. I'm a college student for crying out loud, my days consist of ultimate frisbee and screwing around on the Internet. Life is easy, but certainly not good.

You see, being unproductive is very depressing. Humans need to be out hunting things, battling or developing the newest Ipod in order to truly experience life. If all you are doing is reading books about pre-medieval times and the way the American government machine works, what good is it if your not actually doing something. Even rotating tires would be a step up for me. I was reminded of a friend back in high school who backed a wide bed truck into the side of the garage while working at Tire Barn. I think he got canned after that incident.

During that grueling ten minutes, Dad pointed to what appeared to be the company's mission statement. In large bold at top center was the word integrity. It went on to say that integrity is the most important virtue and all this other stuff like you can't have any of the other virtues if you don't ground yourself with integrity first. It got me thinking. I've got integrity. I know I do, I contain the basic element of virtues. So, now its all about obtaining the other virtues. I can be productive, I don't always have to wake up at noon and slob around all day; because I have integrity.