Character?

[NB: This was an entry I had written for the old, defunct Blog.com blog five or more years ago. I came across it on my hard drive and didn't know why I'd saved a copy. But I think it still holds up.]

While reading an article about social media and the oversharing generation behind mine, I thought about how many of the youngsters will come to regret their youthful exuberance, having written too much about themselves in public, and the impact it had on careers and relationships.

And I thought about their possible response to that proposition, as the kind of thing I would have thought in my youth: This is who I am, we’re different from you old guys, I find this right and proper and so I will never have to change my opinion, etc.

The ability to take up big gestures and poses is important for the youth, even over frivolous things. And although they won’t believe it, their opinions about these things may change, and possibly a sickly regret will sink in—even shame. The problem is the important things they stand for also may be revised.

It’s not a problem because they change their minds about taste or politics or best practices or even ethics or religion; any thinking person is entitled and expected to be able to do so. The permanent record of the Internet makes it harder to change direction; no one wants to look like a waffler. And yet that can be overcome if one finds that truth has dispelled his illusions (or, it should be said, vice versa).

The real problem is when they abandon principles because of frustrated expectations.

When you’re young you think you’ll do great things and be thought of highly by many, and so you may be willing to pay a high price for some decisions, certain you’ll be proved right in the end. The career passed by for love of something unremunerative; the marriage straight out of high school; the protest movement or general strike or even act of violence; even the rebellion against those closest to you have the romantic tinge that whispers of future justification. It may reflect great depths of character to do some of these things, or at least appear to.

(You may note I left joining the military off the list; for one, it’s something of unquestionable nobility, so I do not dispute that; for another thing, it brings with it all the rewards of discipline and honor that I hope make it an unregrettable decision.)

But when the great gesture does not work out? When the acting career derails, the protest is ignored, the marriage sags into misery, and no one around really cares? Is it like the tattoo that one gets more out of emotion than reason and comes to regret? The harmony of romanticism ends, and the dream dies hard, and (here’s the rub) takes the character down with it.

Or was it even character?

How many young people would choose to do something grand if no one would ever know about it? There’s always a sense of playing to the audience. The old definition of character remains: doing the right thing when no one is watching. If your dream fails and you turn bitter, cynical, even angry, then it’s hard to say it was character at all. Just youthful ego. It’s like being someone who is bound to fight for justice, then taking a hard punch, and, while on the ground, wondering if justice is all that important after all. (Which is why a good punch is always helpful for developing humility. People without any humility are, as a rule of thumb, jerks.) You may decide that, although you were right all along, the world has treated you badly and so you deserve whatever you can swipe from it. So there, world!

But what about old-timers who survive success or failure or both and retain a good outlook and a desire to do things right? They have character, and it is solid. Those people can be counted upon to do right.

So young people must be distrusted until they prove that their character outlasts their romanticism. You can’t trust the character of someone who’s never taken a punch.

Never trust anyone under forty. As for people forty and over, you can tell which ones are bastards—the angry people and the people who have never had to endure failure at all—and distribute your trust accordingly.