Business of Life
This is one of the best essays on character, I've read in a long time.
Doug Manning On Character.
I love character. Character is who you are when no one is looking. Character is who you are with people who can't give you anything. Character is who you are when things don't go your way. True character is fearlessly being who you are. True character is stepping up when stepping up is required.
Character defines the quality of life you get to experience. It differentiates the great from the good, the interesting from the humdrum, the resilient from the fragile.
------
True character does not develop in a cave. It unfolds in the full flow of life, when things are challenging. You cannot become a character by wishing it so. Character comes from choosing the uphill climb. You cannot develop true character until you take complete responsibility for your own life.
Read how he compares the character of his parents' generation, his generation and his children's generation.
HT to Jeremy who asks whether character is a resource in decline in these days of material abundance, rising expectations and too few challenges.
Your personal character is your primary asset, one that you build up over time and a resource that you can draw upon in difficult times and can never use up though you can lose it with a single disgraceful act. It may be the only guarantee of everlasting happiness said Seneca, the stoic.
In the not so distant past, in our private schools and liberal arts colleges, the building of character was considered as important as the acquisition of knowledge. Heraclitus said, "Character is destiny, " and Booker T. Washington said, "Character is power".
Character is formed in the torrent of life.Could it be that we have to be knocked down and beaten up by life before we can start Learning from Life?
“How many gifts do we have, buried under a hardened armor, awaiting the gracious trauma of a shattered shell?" the Doctor asks.
And Kahil Gibran tells us
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.