Character is Life

CHARACTER IS LIFE

It is truly said that great men don’t do great things by accident. It is their character that assists them to do great things. True success is determined by not how much you make, but how you make it and how you live your life. Character and integrity are keys to it. No matter how rich you are, if you lack character, you have nothing. How do we present ourselves in front of somebody or how much charitable or generous we are or how much confident we are in facing the challenges of life; all these constitute our character.

What is character?

Character is something that determines our attitude, our behaviour or our possessiveness towards something. It means that you operate within your moral code and integrity, even when no one is watching you or there to judge your actions. It means that fear and guilt are temporary and occasional visitors to your life which simply appear to help you make amendments when necessary but do not stay long. It means that you have nothing to conceal, which in turn gives you the freedom to achieve success to its optimum level.

The ‘Golden Rule’ of universe is whatever you give to others returns to you in the same proportion. This we can understand with a simple example, if in our professional life we are tempted to steal credit of somebody else’s idea to get promotion or to be in good books of the boss, it will be a hollow victory and not the real one. ‘Golden Rule’ says that we must accept the harshest of situations or truth with modesty. We mustn’t take advantages of people to climb the ladders of success. Treat others as you want to be treated. It’s a way to create a good character to lead a happy life.

We must remember these ‘Golden Rules’:

- Be honest and always truthful.

- Superfluous complements and all affection of ceremony are to be avoided, yet where they are not to be neglected.

- Think before you speak.

- Rinse not your mouth in the presence of others.

- Treat others the way you want to be treated.

- Hard work, consistency and creativity leads to success.

- Treasure your body for it is the vessel that guides you through your life.

- Make a difference in someone’s life

‘Great men don’t do great things by accident.’

I have always admired soldiers, great men and women who could stand against all immeasurable odds and came out victorious. Deep within laid a value system, a spirit to work, a personal, ethical philosophy of thinking and conduct.Their every thought and action was involuntarily matched against the ‘Golden Rules’ written on their heart.

Let’s take life journey of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington; they didn’t invoke change in our generation by chance, rather, they were driven by an innate quality to change the world. Abraham Lincoln didn’t wake up one day and decided to focus his efforts on passing legislation to free the slaves. George Washington’s life fully exemplified the rules of civility and decent behaviour in company and conversation. Mahatma Gandhi possessed a rock-solid character formed in his formative years based on strong morals, ethics and value system. These great men had a passion for righteousness, a continual desire to improve themselves and the knowledge of the responsibility of their existence.

As we grow in years and attain maturity, we realize that physical beauty is short-lived and doesn’t affect our life much if fundamentals of our thoughts are unique and beautiful. For instance, When we apply for a job, in the interview, the management scrutinizes us on the basis of our personality, subject-knowledge and worldly wisdom and character. As it is a saying ‘Honesty & Integrity are always paid.’ Similarly ‘Diligence, persistent efforts, honesty, loyalty, benevolence and good behaviour are always paid.’

We must make some principles or rules of our life. We must respect each species and never violate the freedom of others. To maintain our peace of mind we must believe in accepting the harsh realities of life and must be optimistic in approach. We must pause for a moment and reconsider before taking a leap, before making a statement or before taking a risky decision in our life. If we happen to take a favour from someone then we must return the favour before other person starts taking undue advantage of your life.  

Man is gregarious in nature. We sometimes need to take help from others or have to help others. Sometimes it is appropriate to be angry or disliking something in someone. But we should not lose temper as it leads to our own loss. We must immediately apologize and patch-up the situation. Character is simply your essence. Success is only a by-product. Your achievement can be large or small, but without integrity, they simply don’t matter in the end. Focus on strength of your character and success will come on its own accord.

Maintaining a true character while making it larger than life is one hardest trick for a writer of destiny or even a novelist has to pull off. Success requires balancing strengths and weaknesses, and introducing sympathy and loveable, memorable quirks. We must focus on building a novel- worthy character and making it quintessential.  Great novelists like Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, Emily Bronte, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Munshi Premchand, Dharamvir Bharti, Kamleshwar, Jaishankar Prasad, mannu Bhandari etc. deliciously carried character traits to just beyond the extreme and ensured that those character traits directly led to problems and all the other evnts in the novels. The characters that stay with you inspire you and burrow deep into your heart and stay there forever are passionate about ethics and their hobbies and habits ring the truest vibes.

Albert Einstein said, “Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character, which means that opposite is also true. Strength of attitude also becomes strength of character.” Events shouldn’t happen to your character. Your character must create events. Build your character and further character will build you.