Hi Kathy, Thank you for another wonderful post. Without integrity we are all lost. Your post reminds me of a time several years ago when I was prompted to write an ezine article after I received an email from an apparently disgruntled visitor who called me a "bloodsucking hype artist like everyone else." It made me think: "Interestingly enough, the sender of the email had never bought anything from me, nor do I recall having any correspondence with him in the past. However, I had to ask myself the question, "Have I become so wrapped up in making money on the Internet that I have lost sight of the human element behind every click?" "I hope not. I'm quite a gregarious fellow. I get more enjoyment out of visiting with and helping people than anything else. However, as I sit in front of my modem, banging away at the keys hour after hour, it's easy to understand how it could happen. In fact, that is the one major drawback to virtual businesses: lack of the personal touch." The internet is a place where our integrity really has the opportunity to be tested! In person, we are faced with a real, live human being looking right at us, perhaps right into the "windows of the soul," and there is much more pressure on us to be honest and caring. When we sit at a keyboard pounding letters and numbers into cyberspace, it's much easier to pretend to be what we're not. Sad to say, a lot of people, especially those "first-timers" on the internet, are getting burned by people who have forgotten that their lack of integrity really is affecting real, live people who have placed their trust in someone else's hands. What is happening, entirely because of a MASSIVE loss of integrity all over the world, is that it has become very much more difficult to build ANY business, online AND off. People are tired of being burned. They long to trust someone, but are tired of being hurt! They are becoming hardened and disillusioned with the word, "friendship," which is tragic. If we all decided to be a friend to each person we meet, what a difference that would make! I'm not talking about reciprocal relationships - I'll be your friend if you'll be mine - but about just being a friend yourself. This takes real integrity, which I believe is unconditional. To be a real friend requires that you decide to unconditionally love another, requiring nothing from them, but doing whatever you can for them. That requires real integrity. None of us are perfect, but we should never stop trying. My personal belief is that we should trust God to make us better and be ourselves. (faking it goes against the whole point of integrity anyway:) ) Thank you once more for bringing this up, Kathy! God bless, Dave