WHAT ABOUT CHARACTER?- Written by Kathy Schütz

What about character?

The article titled “And what about the character?” written by Kathy Schütz was published in the newspaper Mallorca Daily and in the magazine Mallorca Kids.

And what about the character?

It’s excellent and farsighted that we parents want to provide the best possible education for our children. The demand for competence and knowledge in order to obtain the desired job increases constantly.... Secondary school graduation, master’s degree, post-master’s degree, doctorate....And in a world that is becoming more and more diverse, we have added the languages onto our list of necessary abilities. In many cases yet another essential criterion for reaching our professional goals.

We also wish to give them a healthy diet, a balanced one that nourishes and keeps our children healthy. We add a sport onto our list which, apart from keeping them fit, teaches them the benefits of discipline.  

If you were to employ someone and you had two candidates with similar studies and knowledge, who would you choose? You would without a doubt choose the one with the best character.

The less controversial, the best listener, the best to express himself without losing control, the most sensible, reliable, trustworthy and with the most self-confidence. And why not: the most pleasant.

And what about character? Where do you get it from? Are we born with it? Can we change it?

The education of character  is not institutionalized and has since long been devalued. A lot is learned through the parents or from the people who spend a lot of time with our children. That is, we learn it through imitation when we are children. And it has been imitated through generations. Over and over we repeat, as in a vicious circle, the virtues and flaws of our loved ones.

We often hear the phrase “This is the way I am”, “I am as I am” as if it was a sentence. Resigned, we passively accept and learn to live with our flaws and virtues.

The reality is that we are able to improve it all! We are able to reach the moon, to improve the communication technologies, the comfort, invent flying machines, and eradicate diseases with medicines. We make progress in anything that we set out to do because we work many hours of the day in order to achieve it.  

We only need the same amount of dedication in order to make progress in the “Cience of Character”. We can work with our character and the best thing of all is that we can do so simultaneously whilst carrying out any other activity. First of all we need to observe and analyse ourselves and admit our faults. To accept that we suffer from whatever we suffer. Once we have found a fault, it is not sufficient to wish we could change it. We have to be determined to improve a little day by day.

There are some useful and necessary resources for this purpose:

- Concentration: when doing something concentrate the best you can.

- Food: nourish your mind daily with reading matter on exemplary lives or spiritual subjects, on human values and self-help.

- Daily auto analysis at night, admit your daily faults without blaming yourself or becoming depressed. Instead think about how you could have done it better and how you intend to do it the next time.

We don’t have to give ourselves goals to reach as long as we work with one fault at a time. This has to be done incessantly until the problem is solved and then you can go on to the next one. Little by little you will get far with persistence and without despairing.

And what about how teaching your children to have a good character?

That is done through imitation.

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