The original text, written on 5 November 2015, is preserved below as the spine of the piece. What follows each part is not a correction but an interrogation, the same questions asked again, eleven years on, of the same three things: character as the foundation, and honesty and integrity built on it.
Part 1: The Essay ( 2015 )
My father taught me honesty and integrity and asked me to find out the missing link. I was angry. Why would he not just simply say it to me? He stood his ground. I carried on with honesty and integrity. I read books, all sorts to find the missing link. I did not find it. Not because it did not exist, but because my mind was too closed to see it and refused to see the reason why the old man would not just tell me. Then he died, without telling me.
In my little sphere of influence, I ‘brutally’ tried to enforce honesty and integrity, I was resisted. Those who can stand up to me accused me of being too aggressive. Those who cannot either pretended to be following my concepts or simply walked away. I was confused. Why will anybody not see the benefits of honesty and integrity? Why will anybody despise these two powerful ingredients of good life? The more questions I asked, the less answer I got and the more confused I became.
What The Essay Asserts
Strip the story back, and the essay makes a structural claim. Character is the foundation; honesty and integrity are built on it. The missing link was never honesty or integrity themselves; they were enforced loudly and unsuccessfully, but the ground they stand on was missing. Two claims sit inside that one. That character is self-evident to those who meet it: lived, it spreads. And that honesty vouches for the honest man. Those two are what a decade has tested.
Character Has no External Audit
As the last child of my father, I think the man tolerated me a lot. I asked questions upon questions and he answered them all. Those he had no ‘satisfactory’ answers to, he simply told me ‘that was what my father told me’. Then one day, I asked why did he not clarify from his father? He looked straight into my eyes and said ‘in our time, we did not have the courage to ask our father questions. We simply accepted whatever we were told’. Hun, how sad I mustered. What a culture of silence and subjugation. He was not worried. He was glad he can at least answer most of my questions. Most importantly all his answers were sincere and honest. You can always vouch for him. But he gave me a difficult assignment. It was more painful that I was not at his bedside when he passed on. The pain increased when I was told it was my name he said last before giving up the ghost. Would he have told me the riddle at last? I can only imagine.
I kept on reading without necessarily looking for the answer again. I studied the bible with emphasis on the books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Psalms for clues. I got some wisdom through the process but I did not yet find the missing link. I read biographies, history of empires and some philosophies. I got some concept but not what I was looking for.
Honesty can be checked against the facts; integrity against the record. Character cannot be checked against anything outside the person holding it. It is the premise the other two rest on, and the only one of the three that only its owner can see. The essay knew this and passed over it. Character is “demonstrated and not simply taught”, which means it needs a witness.
The father’s generation had witnesses that could not be dismissed: a narrow community that had watched a man fail for forty years and would not let him edit the record. The promise that character is infectious presumed that the real thing could be distinguished from the copy. That presumption is now under strain. The witness is optional; the record is editable. Character can be demonstrated to an audience even as none is built in private. The foundation did not move; what became visible is that it never rested on evidence, only on the alternative being invisible.
Honesty Became a Strategy
Honesty was costly in the father’s world, and the cost was the point. Withholding was free and universal; that was the point of the culture of silence. An honest answer registered because it was rare and carried risk, and it told you something about the man who gave it. The incentive has inverted. Candor is now a strategy: a way to signal virtue and gather an audience. The more honesty is rewarded, the less it reveals. When everyone is candid on purpose, candor stops being evidence, and the father’s vouch weakens in proportion to how much honesty pays.
Integrity Does Not Transfer by Force
Then and then! The answer came through a question from my own son. The one called ‘professor’ asked an innocent question that finally produced the missing link.
It was in the morning, as we gathered to study the scripture, we found ourselves discussing the mighty men of David. After reading and before I could start explaining anything, he raised his hand and fire the question. What does ‘man of valor mean’? I paused. Then the answer came. A strong man with good character I opined. I went further to say that not all strong men are men of valor, but those with character. Good character.
Just then, it occurred to me that the missing link I was searching for decades, has finally been found.
Honesty and integrity built on solid character produce good result. Character is persuasive and not enforceable. It is infectious and not coercive, demonstrated and not simply taught. It is lived and not sermonized.
A society deficient in character, leadership not built on character produce a chaotic and dysfunctional environment.
The essay already contains its hardest evidence. Integrity was enforced brutally, by its own account, and it failed. Those who could stand up called the author aggressive; those who could not pretended or left. That is integrity held without competence: the standard right, the delivery destroying the transmission. The apology to those brutalized reads ten years on as a finding, not a confession.
What Shifted
In 2015 the three were scarce and hard to fake. Today they are abundant in appearance and hard to verify. The friction that built them, the uneditable witness, the cost of candor, the consequences of inconsistency, has been removed from all three at once. The conclusion the essay reached stands. The maintenance clause it never wrote is what eleven years supply.
Part II: Eleven Years on
The maintenance clause
The essay said what character is and how it spreads. It did not say what keeps it. The omission was invisible while friction came from outside: the father’s generation had character imposed on them whether they wanted it or not, and paid for it with subjugation and unexamined answers. Removing the subjugation was right. Removing the friction with it was the unintended part. Character is not self-maintaining. What maintains it is unglamorous and largely involuntary: people permitted to contradict you, conduct nobody is watching, consequences you do not get to negotiate. Each is now optional.
Questions Still Open
Where does character come from now that its witnesses are optional? If it has to be chosen, is it still character in the father’s sense? What makes honesty register when it costs nothing and pays well? The essay’s test was that a sincere answer vouches for the man who gives it; nothing has replaced that test. And how does integrity transfer without force? The essay tried pressure and documented the failure. If the answer is character, the argument is circular unless someone can say what builds it.
Part III: The Answer Arrives Still
The answer arrives the way it always did: through the son’s question about the men of valor. A strong man with good character, the author says, not all strong men, only those with character.
Eleven years on, the question is harder than the 2015 answer. What a man of valor is, once everything that can be staged has been stripped away, is still what the essay is asking. The father’s challenge stands unanswered in the original text. This revision leaves it unanswered too, and says so rather than defending the conclusion untouched.
Closing
Thanks, Dad, for the challenge, though I could not give you an answer before you left. Thanks, Prof, for bailing me out at last. The apology from 2015 holds and extends: to those brutalized during the search, unreserved apology still.
November 5, 2015
November 5, 2026
©TheVillageBoy.
( The figureman who loves alphabets )
