What makes a good character?
I am not talking about for a book or a movie, but I suspect that there would be a lot of overlap. But I wonder what kinds of people are interesting to interact with and spend time around. Do we want people who are singularly focused on themselves or what is important to them? Do we want people who are interested in us but don't have any interests themselves? Do we want people who are fun to be around when things are good, but are absent when they are not?
What kinds of characters do we want in our lives?
What kind of character are we ourselves?
I guess we all have a range of roles we play depending on the situation and our time in life, but there are definitely some people who are more interesting than others. It doesn't mean they are nicer, or more fun necessarily, but just more interesting. And then there are some who energise us, and others who sap our energy like vampires.
For me personally, I find the most interesting people are those who have valuable experience. This doesn't mean they have travelled the world and seen a hundred different cities, but rather they have put effort into learning in areas of value and are able to articulate what they know into compelling conversation. And the knowledge they have doesn't come from a book, it isn't theoretical - it is hands on. Well-read people usually bore the fuck out of me.
And I think that this is why a lot of the mainstream online content creators are not attractive to me, because they don't speak from experience and rather just regurgitate some nonsense to trigger an algorithm. It is all a bit gimmicky, rather than authentic. Staged and rehearsed, rather than from natural flow. Flow is important in the interaction I think, because it is hard for someone to speak with flow, if they don't have the experience in what they are speaking (or writing) about.
Not my cup of tea.
I am not everyone's cup of tea, nor is everyone mine. In fact, tea is often not someone's preferred drink at all. However, I think that with our ability to pick and choose what we expose ourselves to with granularity and accuracy, we have narrowed our palate and have become insensitive to anything that lays outside of our normal. And a lot lays outside. And by "insensitive" I mean overly sensitive to difference to the point that we expect not to have it in our view or experience. We want our lives to be easy and sanitised of anything that challenges us. And I think as a result, we have largely made ourselves....
Boring.
Do you think that you are an interesting person? Do you think other people find you interesting? Do you think that when you are in a conversation with them, they want to hear more from you? And if you can hold their attention, is it because you are interesting as a person, or do they want something else from you? Is it because you are rich, good looking, famous or something else? Are you the interesting part of the equation, or something other?
A person is known by the company he keeps.
What kind of company do you keep?
When it comes to "being interesting" it is going to come down to personal opinion, but that is also going to be tempered by experience, or inexperience as the case may be. Being interesting isn't vital, but what about being of good character? Is that something that we should be regardless of what else we might be?
Should we be trustworthy and dependable? Should we be honest and kind? Act with integrity? Should we take responsibility and hold ourselves accountable for our actions?
A lot of "shoulds" could fit in there, but there is a big difference between what we should do and what we actually do, isn't there? Interesting or not, if we aren't good people, should anyone want to spend time with us?
Who would genuinely admit to not being of good character?
Or perhaps, through a process of justification and fantasy, we all think we are of good character, even when we might not be. Perhaps with all the terrible things Hitler or Stalin did, when thy looked in the mirror at themselves, they saw a good person. And if that was the case, is what they did wrong if we are told to be "our authentic selves"?
While the masses might agree to the "do no harm to others" in concept, the fact is that a lot of commonly accepted parts of our life are harmful, yet we keep on doing them, using them, pushing them to our kids. General consensus doesn't make something right. If that was the case, the sun would be travelling around the earth, not vice versa.
Anyway, it is up to each of us to decide what kinds of characters are interesting to interact with, but what is even more up to us, is whether we are the kind of person who lives up to our own standards. And if we do not, what does that say about us, or our actual standards?
We create our own character.
So why do so many of us behave so poorly?
Taraz
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