Deconstructing Character

Life has an incredible way of steering us away from our authentic self; especially those of us who use stories as a way to cope with all the things going on in the world. It can be easy to get lost in imagination and the cast of characters living in our heads that we sometimes forget to live as the authors of our lives. I hear a lot of people talk about someone's "character." But what does that mean? Pay attention to the media you consume (whether that's Netflix/Hulu, cable, Twitter/Instagram/Facebook/Toktok) and just observe how many times people will talk about the "character" of a person as a way to talk about their moral fiber or boil a person down to the perception of the sum of their parts. "Character" is more than just your demographics (age, height, weight, race, gender identity, sexuality). To learn one's character, we're asked to carefully observe ourselves and how we react and respond to a variety of situations. It asks us to slow down and process our response (versus a knee-jerk reaction) the next time our partner or child forgets to put gas in the car. How do you define "character"? What are the ways in which you learn your own "character"?