We are dynamic beings. That often means we are attrac­ted to the paths of least res­ist­ance, the easy roads, the famil­iar places, the old habits and tra­di­tions. We cling to pre­ju­dices and ste­reo­types, to save ourselves the hassle and effort of hav­ing to fig­ure everything out anew, every day, hour, minute and second. In a way this prop­erty of our exist­ence keeps us sane. But often it deprives us of amaz­ing learn­ing experiences.

What make someone a great per­son? Is it his pos­ses­sions? Her per­son­al­ity? His good deeds? Her career and achieve­ments? I would sur­mise that great­ness is best meas­ured by look­ing at the whole per­son through­out his/​her life­time. Where s/​he has been, where s/​he is and where s/​he hopes to be. Since we all have the same ori­gin, what determ­ines the great­ness of a per­son is the jour­ney traveled, and the dir­ec­tion for the future.

But that’s a very simplistic view. Life is more com­plic­ated. One may shine with great­ness one even­ing, and behave appallingly the very next morn­ing. How­ever, a thread of beha­vi­oral con­sist­ency is usu­ally what defines people, and that con­sist­ency is based on moral character.

Moral. That word so many shun these days. Sounds so much like mor­al­ity. Why attach it to a word like ‘char­ac­ter’? Simply because they are insep­ar­able. I think of char­ac­ter as the product and moral val­ues as the pro­cess. Or rather, moral decisions, choices based on moral val­ues and prin­ciples. Your moral char­ac­ter is your source of inspir­a­tion in times of trial, it is what guides your dif­fi­cult decisions, and it is even what makes you who you are. Moral char­ac­ter is built every day, each time you make a decision, no mat­ter how small it may be. Depend­ing on how you build it, it will lead you to make bad, good or the best decisions at key points in your life. When issues such as «Who shall I put first, my fam­ily or my friends?», or «Should I sup­port my friend in her decisions to have an abor­tion, or oppose her choice at the risk of dam­aging our friend­ship?», your moral char­ac­ter will in a great meas­ure determ­ine your choices in these situations.

I use the ana­logy of sword-​making because I think it is very fit­ting to moral char­ac­ter. You start with a lump of inert, ugly metal, and in a very, very lengthy pro­cess you heat it up, beat the heck out of it in repet­it­ive ham­mer strokes, re-​heat it and beat it again, until you get the right shape. That takes a very long time, in which time every stroke of the ham­mer is import­ant, but not crit­ical. What is crit­ical is con­sist­ency in smit­ing the metal, and that con­sist­ency must be based on sound prin­ciples of blacksmithing.

Like­wise, our small, seem­ingly insig­ni­fic­ant daily choices are often based on much large, super-​ordinate prin­ciples and val­ues. When I decide whether to pray or check my emails first thing in the morn­ing, I am not mak­ing a crit­ical decision, it may even be con­sidered as trivial. How­ever, it is based upon a prin­ciple that is extremely import­ant to me: Whose com­mu­nic­a­tion is more import­ant to me? God’s or other people’s? Each time I make a «trivial» decision, I should think about the under­ly­ing prin­ciple at stake. My decision then is an addi­tional stroke on the hot metal of my moral char­ac­ter, either prop­erly or poorly done. Con­sist­ently mak­ing the right decision strengthens my moral char­ac­ter, so that when a crit­ical decision comes that is based on the same under­ly­ing prin­ciple, mak­ing the right choice will be much easier. Such a crit­ical choice could be whether to accept an assign­ment to go on a 3-​year mis­sion for my Church or accept a pro­mo­tion from my employer that requires more of my time.

Moral char­ac­ter takes a life­time to per­fect, but unlike sword-​making, you have to use it all through­out your life. What is import­ant in this ana­logy is that the pro­cess is slow and made up of innu­mer­able small choices, guided by sound moral prin­ciples. Here is a list of the prin­ciples that guide me in my every day choices:

  • I am a child of God and He loves me
  • I must nour­ish my Spirit as well as my body if I am to be at peace within myself
  • I have a pur­pose in life: to help oth­ers learn of the love God has for them, to par­take of that love myself, and to return to live with Him
  • Hon­esty always super­sedes deception
  • Hap­pi­ness comes from doing what’s right, in all circumstances
  • Women are equal in worth, ori­gin and divine poten­tial to men. I believe they often exceed men in sens­it­iv­ity, love and moral courage
  • Pleas­ure is fleet­ing, and sat­is­fies the soul about as much as a piece of chocol­ate sat­is­fies the body. Once you’re done, you’ve got noth­ing to show for it, except extra bag­gage, and often less money in your pocket.
  • Bring­ing chil­dren into the world and bring­ing them up is one of the greatest joys of life. It is also one of the most difficult.
  • The exper­i­ence of Joy can­not exist without the exper­i­ence of Sor­row. The extent to which you exper­i­ence the neg­at­ive often determ­ines how much of the pos­it­ive you can enjoy. But your atti­tude determ­ines how much you bene­fit from tri­als and challenges.

There are many more, the list could go on and on!