Character

Everyone talks about what they want to be but not who they want to be. But that is partly because since the moment you're born you're asked questions about just that.

What kind of job do you want when you grow up?

What sort of career are you looking to pursue?

Do you wanna be an astronaut?

or an engineer perhaps?

No one talks about who you want to be as a person.

Nietzsche predicted that one of the biggest problems of the next two centuries would be Nihilism, which is the belief in nothingness, that life is meaningless, or rather it is the collapse of all belief systems.

And he isn't wrong. Since school, we're barely taught anything about the world within us. The chaos within us and how to harbour it. We aren't taught how to develop our character or what is the importance of it.

Your job gets you through the day but your character gets you through the night.

Ever since the dawn of humanity and civilisation, humans have dealt with the existential burden and come up with creative solutions to the problem.

One of which is forging your character.

To have a code by which you live and to rather die than to break the code, for the pain of breaking the code is far worse than death itself.

The samurais called it the Bushido.

Partly why a lot of people live by someone else's rules is because they haven't done enough thinking, something that they don't want to do. That's not to say that following someone else's rules is an act of cowardice. We all live in a society. To be able to exist within the confines of a society, you have to play by it's rules. But within that, you have a lot of leeway.

You can decide who you want to be as a person, that's one of the most remarkable achievements of the modern society. To exist as an individual is a gift we are too ungrateful for. We have forsaken our individual identity to have taken group as a primary mode of existence.

There are only two ways in which human beings exist - as an individual and as part of a group. There is nothing wrong with being a part of a group, we all are.

But ironically, if you want to understand groups then you have to understand individuals first, for an individual will always be the measuring unit of a group.

Which is all the more reason to develop your character because to develop one's character is the same as developing one's individual identity. To form and initialise one's individual identity, to reside in it and to further sharpen it. For the pursuit of one’s ideal self, rules are necessary. Thus, making rules for yourself is vital.

And if you can’t follow your own rules, then are you truly in control of yourself?

This is what I meant by my previous passage about discipline by the way. People think not having rules to follow and not being disciplined is true freedom, but that’s not true, because then you’re just a slave to your impulses and your need to gratify yourself instantly. That is not true freedom.

Anyway, back to my passage.

There's more to an individual than the group that they belong to, much more in fact. The more you will develop yourself as an individual, the more distinct an individual you will become.

There is a saying in a lot of Asian countries that run along the lines of - The head that sticks out from the rest is chopped off.

And that is true. So I came up with a saying of my own as a counter to it.

"Only a person with a thick dragon skin and a wide neck can risk sticking out his head from the rest."

The idea is to toughen up and grow a thicker skin through trials and adversity.

To be a distinct human being isn't easy, to be larger than life isn't easy. But on this page, I've never advocated for doing the easy thing.

Be an exaggerated version of yourself, laugh at a joke hideously and louder than anyone, dance in the rain, cry a river alone in the bathroom or with your friends or your family (if you have friends and family of course), pursue what is meaningful and what is hard, confront your fears with foxy eyes, take your suffering head on, learn to stand your ground, make fun of your friends and let your friends make fun of you, walk out of your house as if you have something to offer to the world, use your brain when necessary and above all, have a heart.

In this, all the meaning of life will be found.

Through this, you will have the character of a respectable and admirable human being.

Through this, you will become a human being, almost superhuman, to be able to withstand the trials life throws at us.

See you next time!

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P.S. :- I always wondered about how gorillas get so buffed despite the fact that they only eat plants. Turns out, they grow their own protein with the help of the bacteria inside of them.