I am speaking here of the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual (Oxford Dictionary) not the person in a novel, play, or film.
Qualities are an infinite variety and some matter more than others to us as individuals and to society. Reading “The Road to Character” the wonderful 2015 best seller book by David Brooks, I like the idea of the “eulogy” virtues versus the résumé ones. Character, David Brooks says, would be the sum of those eulogy virtues, Oxford would call them qualities.
The book attractively follows the life stories of character strong women and men who built their lives around strong beliefs and personal discipline of the highest order. In the end the résumé virtues only matter to the author of the résumé and disappear along the need to represent. What remains are eulogy virtues, those we hopefully remain famous for.
How, when our life education has fine tuned us into presenting the best version of our self to the world, can we focus instead on our life’s mission and those qualities that together aggregate into character, making it all possible?
Character is an underused word in our modern environment: it suggests a lifetime of hard work, overcoming hardships and forging ahead – all experiences we associate with world class athletes or extreme adventurers but not us common people. Can binge watching Netflix ever build character? Better give up on the concept and focus instead on our personal brand image (think instagram profiles)…
Time and again though, we seek true fulfilment and it is in that work that we discover the value of living diligently, with intent, true to our values, setting an example for all to see and take heart from. David Brooks puts it better than I could :
“ What a wise person teaches is the smallest part of what they give. The totality of their life, of the way they go about it in the smallest details, is what’s gets transmitted.”
The message is the person.
Here is a hit list of virtues of those wise ones: humility, restraint, reticence, temperance, respect, and self discipline.
Why do these qualities feel so remote in 2021? Because it is the résumé self that rules, the personal brand, the marketing (indeed the word marketing never meant tell a true story only to depict the art of bringing products to market efficiently: think of those car ads depicting cars as safe when fatality statistics clearly identify cars as the most dangerous mode of transportation!). And the disease (I use the word in its original sense : dis-ease) is the lack of truth this personal marketing entails.
Authenticity, transparence all feel so fresh today: these are rare qualities and seeing them around feels like a treat.
Pride is what stands in the way of transparence: it stops us from revealing our weaknesses which also are our humanness. David Brooks says:
“Pride deludes us into thinking that we are the authors of our own lives”.
It’s not that we don’t author our lives, rather our book of life has multiple authors and accepting it with humility lets us be authentic and choose moral depth over marketing buzz.
With intent towards virtue we can let our heart be our guide in our life’s struggle. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote:
“the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart”.
Wisdom comes at last when the north on our personal moral compass is labelled “Soul” instead of “Success”
