Being upright

“There is a very beautiful word called consistency. One is consistent when one says what one thinks and does what one says. An upright person is correct in everything, with everyone and in front of everyone.

Let's say, for example, that someone comes to destroy our land. Wouldn't an upright person defend the rights of nature?

Because it could be that someone acts uprightly by defending with words, but when it comes time to exploit the farmer or attack the land, they just stay quiet. That's no longer being upright. That's being inconsistent.

One takes a stand now and later and in any circumstance. That is being consistent.

An upright person has a position. That is what our grandparents in the countryside have taught us.

But how do you learn that? Is there a course in school called 'Being Upright'? No. Do they teach you to be upright at university? No. So how and where do you learn to be upright? How do you learn to be upright in a broken reality where the authorities steal, the corrupt are influential, the educated are ignorant, the lazy make demands, those who destroy progress, those who commit crimes boast, those who are slow-witted are respected, and those who lie govern?

There is no baptism of uprightedness, no graduation or diploma in uprightedness. There is no confirmation ceremony at the age of fourteen to proclaim that a person is upright. That test of being upright is taken by life at every moment.

A person who can be considered upright, even if they are eighty years old, may run the risk of straying: "The old man strayed," one might say. He strayed: he went off the path...

Being upright is not a title: it is a virtue and a temperance that is acquired through incessant practice and inexhaustible consistency.

Alfredo Mires

in: The Right to Essence