On Character Building

  Those of us who are fans of the PBS Newshour know that one of its weekly guest commentators is David Brooks, the noted journalist with the New York Times. Recently in an interview he spoke passionately about one of his new books entitled The Road to Character. In it he explores the lives of a number of people he believes to have truly built lives of character, lives not built so much on career success as on what he considers “consequential living” …Bayard Rustin, Dwight Eisenhower, Frances Perkins, and St. Augustine, to name a few. According to Brooks it is in combating our weaknesses and building ourselves from within that brings true breadth of character. He says that it is the humble me that creates a life of value rather than the “Big Me” that is so celebrated today.  He speaks of "radical self awareness from a distance."  In other words, who or what outside myself needs me?

Good points...

Brooks makes good points. We in this culture often do a lot of breast beating when we accomplish something, which may be wonderful but perhaps not as lasting as we think. How much greater and stronger might we become, how much more essentially valuable might we be if we worked to corral our weak places until we became strong in them? What if we could stand on the shoulders of our own flawed personalities to become the genuine vital beings that live inside us?

Pure gold...

Some things really are worth the effort, and certainly the emergence of who we truly are as spiritual beings living a consequential life in the world is one of them. Real character building does not involve self laceration for mistakes or self aggrandizement for successes as much as quietly and continuously doing what is ours to do. Sometimes it may seem thankless and lonely but what comes forth from us in our devoted efforts to bring our good to life is pure gold.

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