I am finding that I am not a man of integrity. I’d like to think this is something I can correct, but as they say, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

I’m currently dieting. I’m in my fourth round of my weight loss journey, and I find that holding myself accountable to my diet coach helps me to lose the weight I’d like to lose. The goal this round is 139.x... and I’m determined to get there even if I have to go beyond the twenty-one days of a “normal” round to get there.

Or am I?

I find that as I consume apples or oranges and water, that my weight throughout each morning continues to drop. So, as I fill out the accountability tracker, if I lose weight after I send the snapshot to my coach, I hedge the next day’s gains/losses.

For example, if I report my weight today as 146.7, but later today I weigh in at 146.2... I can use that tomorrow to show a loss.

Which I tend to do. Even if I weigh in at 149.5 tomorrow.

Do I lack integrity? Probably.

Do most people? Probably.

Does this make me a bad person? Probably.

Am I okay with this? Probably.

History has shown I do not have many scruples. For the last several months, I’ve been wearing a pullover jacket which I acquired from a seventeen-year-old girl. The year she died. I was twenty-three.

I don’t talk about the nature of our relationship. It’s really nobody’s business. Yet, I have this sweatshirt. I like it. I wear it.

I liked her.

It’s been hanging in my closet for years. Yet, sometime last fall, I picked it out and put it on. I’ve been wearing it ever since.

Yet, she’s not the one who haunts me.

Clarissa is.

Anyway, this month, I have been spending quite a bit of time with my ex-girlfriend’s father. Someone who I never thought I would spend any time with at all not long ago.

It’s amazing how perceptions change and cynicism passes. He’s a good man—I never doubted this. I, on the other hand, have never considered myself “good.”

Anyway, this man is dying. He’s a wealth of information... interesting information. And I find myself drawn to spending time with him. I bring him lunch, and we talk for hours. About nothing, really.

Okay, not nothing. I find I share many commonalities with him. Our affinity for old movies, and their soundtracks. I re-introduced him to grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. He’s re-introducing me to movies that defined the kind of man he is—and always has been.

He’s a man of integrity. He believes in the man who’s word is his bond. And that an oath is an oath.

After all, it should be. No one made you take the oath. If you take an oath, you should abide by it.

Yet, I’m amazed, that someone I always considered an anti-social curmudgeon is such a fascinating and social man... someone who has so much to teach in this short time he has left on this plane.

I don’t feel so guilty that I lack integrity. In fact, I have hope that I can still attain integrity. There are a few oaths I have taken in my lifetime, and time remains for me to see them through.

Perhaps I can be saved.