Character

There is the well known quote, "Character is everything." While I'm still trying to get clearer picture of what it means, I have a good understanding of how it works in our life, and the importance of it. In this age of computer, there are vast and instant informations, and the question is getting to the story behind the informations. But the ability to go a step further than mere information requires a few sets of fundamentals. First of all, there is the old and universal fundamental of asking what, how, when, who,and why. The second set of the fundamentals are perspective, insight, and wisdom. The ability to see through the informations is the insight to find the real motives, goals, main points, objectives, or agenda. And the insight is only as good as the perspective coming from a life time of learning, thinking, analyzing, synthesizing, and forming a comprehensive world view. Then there is wisdom to tie everything together to find out what it is all about.

These sets of fundamentals are essential in this age of instant informations. But this is nothing new because we needed them all along in our human history, and because they are fundamental human qualities. Another human quality inextricably melted into all these is character. A character can be attributed to an individual, organization, community, region (physically and spiritually), or a nation.

The obvious is that a character is both given and formed. A character is a difficult concept to clearly understand and define. A character takes the form of many characteristics. One thing clear is that it is what makes us us. The character in us ties everything that is in us, and gives each one of us our distinct form. There are vast amount of informations available but what we do with it is decided with the above mentioned sets of fundamentals and those fundamentals are guided by the character.

Character means many different things but the most important use of the word is that it is the guiding backbone of our destiny. Many times the guiding backbone is at the subconscious level. But a person with character usually makes decisions on life which turn out later to be in character. A person with character eventually shows a certain class.

Character is most in demand when there is a crisis or real change is desirable. Looking in myself and around the world, a little character is definitely in demand. We have to have informations. We have to understand them correctly. Then, we have to act with character. The only thing is it takes time.