Integrity as Craft: Willing Oneself Toward a Total, Messy Wholeness

By Ren K. D.

I’ve never been one for rules. Rules and their technical demands—functioning as authority, really—have filled me with vitriol and disgust for as long as I can remember. It’s a reaction like full-body hives that I never, not once, felt I could control.

At the age of 3, I lasted precisely three days in ballet classes, discovering I could not simply leap and twirl around the room in the special outfit, causing absolute chaos and getting swiftly kicked out. I lasted a few month...