Integrity

First of all, this post is not directed at anyone. This is simply an observation of the behavior of a number of people. If this post seems vague, it is on purpose because I don't want to give specific examples for fear of offending anyone. That is not my intent. I simply wish to draw attention to a phenomenon which seems to be growing exponentially recently. How often do we make plans with someone and bail?
How often do we say "I'll be right over" and take our time with the knowledge that someone is waiting for us? How often do we purposefully show up late to a date or a party? I'm guilty of this as much as anyone. But it is something I've been working on to improve. I would like to give one funny example to illustrate what I mean. I used to pick up my friends Noel and Dayton for church nearly every week. Almost every time I showed up to get them Dayton would come out and say Noel was just finishing getting ready. This would also be the case when getting them to go out to eat or go to a party. One time I showed up right on time to get them for some activity and Dayton came out to say that Noel was getting ready and that he had said "Damn Jeff's punctuality!" We had a great laugh about it and it's been a running joke with us since. Noel has improved a lot as well, recently I went to pick him up for something and he was outside standing on the curb waiting for me! Noel and I recently had a long talk about the decline of integrity among people and I think we both subconsciously committed to ourselves to have more integrity. The point of this post is to bring attention to the meaning of the word integrity and the fact that it is declining so much in our society. Often times we say that we are going to do something then for whatever reason we flake. I'd like to propose an idea, how about when someone asks us if we want to do something and we don't want to, we say "Thanks for the invite, but I don't want to do that." And how about we start showing up on time for things rather than being late on purpose. When you show up late for a party or something you tell the host that "I had more important things going on so I couldn't come on time but now I'm making time for you." I know people feel like they aren't cool when they show up on time, if that's the case, then I'm not gonna be cool. I'd rather have integrity.