This is not a new year’s resolution piece , since I don’t believe in this concept at all. Nor, a 3 steps to build your character kinda stuff. There are some thoughts based on David Brooks’ book “The Road to Character” that were inspired mostly by the rise of a certain digital asset that we are all familiar with and tie with the beginning of the year.
As the author says : “I wrote this book not sure I could follow the road to character, but I wanted at least to know what the road looks like and how others have trodden it.” In a similar fashion, I want to use these thoughts as a compass to show me (us) a certain direction I think we should head in times that we have gathered some or a lot ( steem ) power in our hands.
As a proud Greek let me point out the origin of the word. In ancient times it literally meant “stamping tool”. The word evolved to mean a “distinctive mark” and from that it evolved into “a description of a person, especially of a person’s qualities” and finally to today’s sense of “distinguishing qualities”. Think that again. Your character is a stamping tool. Character is a set of dispositions, desires, and habits that are slowly engraved during the struggle against your own weakness.
The word habit is very interesting and very powerful. In 1877, the psychologist William James wrote a short treatise called ‘Habit.’ When you are trying to lead a decent life, he wrote, you want to make your nervous system your ally and not your enemy. You want to engrave certain habits so deep that they will become natural
and instinctual. James wrote that when you set out to engrave a habit—say, going on a diet or always telling the truth—you want to launch yourself with as ‘strong and decided an initiative as possible.’ Make the beginning of a new habit a major event in your life. Then, ‘never suffer an exception’ until the habit is firmly rooted in your life. A single slip undoes many ne acts of self-control. Then take advantage of every occasion to practice your habit.
So, character goes hand in hand with habits. Habits we create, habits we cultivate , habits we master. It is very difficult to create a new habit, it takes work and discipline. And time. But, they are crucial, because they formulate our actions and behaviors that eventually build our character. They are, also, our virtues and there are some kind of virtues that we don’t pay much attention to.
The author talks about the difference between the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the ones you list on your résumé, the skills that you bring to the job market and that contribute to external success. The eulogy virtues are deeper. They’re the virtues that get talked about at your funeral, the ones that exist at the core of your being - whether you are kind, brave, honest or faithful; what kind of relationships you formed. Most of us, most of the time, even though we admit that eulogy virtues are more important, we focus on resume virtues. Our educational system and society in general, is oriented around success and career. Don’t get me wrong, I am all about money, success and stuff , but these should not compromise our actions.
And I believe that in this time and age, and we have seen it in our little web neighborhood, that the more “character” you have the more successful and rewarded you are. I find it liberating. Many people just don’t want to “sell” themselves. They don’t have to, if they don’t want to. They can be themselves, the best version of themselves and other people will appreciate them. We are entering a new type of economy that can go hand in hand with character.
This is what Mr. Brooks thinks: “The answer must be to stand against, at least in part, the prevailing winds of culture. The answer must be to join a counterculture. To live a decent life, to build up the soul, it’s probably necessary to declare that the forces that encourage the Big Me, while necessary and liberating in many ways, have gone too far. We are out of balance. It’s probably necessary to have one foot in the world of achievement but another foot in a counterculture that is in tension with the achievement ethos.”
This year is going to be exciting and probably life-changing. Is going to be a year of character ?
It’s up to us.
And until we all walk the road to character,
Be healthy, smile and Steem.
