The Road To Character

I came to read the book “The Road To Character” by David Brooks as a reference to my constant question of what makes a good life. I do not want to focus my life solely on building the “résumé virtues”—achieving wealth, fame, and status— but also crucially on what exists at the core of our being: kindness, bravery, honesty and faithfulness.

Brooks presents certain ideas that are debatable, but I find some of his perspectives thoughtful and intelligent. As I believe in spreading ideas that matter, so here I am writing to share with you what I have learned from the book and hope that would inspire you to read it.

1. We are dual in our nature, and the true self is a product of cultivation.

In my culture there are two schools of thought. One is, we are born as good people, and the other is, we are born evil. These two assume that personality is what our nature starts out with. Depending on which one we adopt, we would have different ways to explain someone’s kindness, misbehaviours, or crimes. We would never question it as we're born this or that way.

Yet like Brooks, I believe that we are dual in our nature. We are fallen, but also splendidly endowed. We have a side to our nature that is sinful —selfish, deceiving, and self-deceiving— but we have another side to our nature that seeks transcendence and virtue.

As much as we need the right to correct the wrong, we need the wrong to cultivate the right. We can only become solid, stable and worthy of self-respect when we have defeated or at least struggled with our own demons. If we take away the concept of sin, then we take away the thing that we should struggle against in order to be good.

2. But why are we so lost on our way to find a solid sense of right and wrong?

Brooks offered his view that it’s because today we live in a culture that teaches us to promote and advertise ourselves and to master the skills required for success, but that gives little encouragement to humility, sympathy, and honest self-confrontation, which are necessary for building character.

I deeply realised this when reading the chapter where Brooks looked into how education was conducted years ago. Today teachers tend to look for their students; intellectual strengths, so they can cultivate them. But a century ago, professors tended to look for their students’ moral weaknesses, so that could correct them.

For my generation, we had been taught, among many others, that intellectuality made a person a true one. Yet as I grew up, I realised there were other things in life that mattered than to be competitive and successful. Albert Einstein once said, “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” But how to be of value? And be of value to whom? One would hold these questions when he or she hasn't learned very much about that in a ‘selfie’ society.

3. Perhaps we would find the answers in moments of quietness and reflection.

By looking into some of the world’s greatest thinkers and inspiring leaders, Brooks arrived at this following conclusion that I very much agree.

Throughout human history, people have found that they are most aware of their depths when they are on retreats, during moments of separation and stillness, during moments of quiet communion. They have found that they need time, long periods of stillness, before the external self quiets and the internal one can be heard. These moments of stillness and quiet are just more rare today. We reach for the smartphone.

To be good, we might not need to save the world but maybe just need to spend some moments of the day to stay quiet and reflect on what we have done and its effects on ourselves and people surround us. We then would arrive at the awareness that there’s a lot we don’t know and that a lot of what we think we know is distorted or wrong. We then would organise and discipline ourselves to be better than we used to be.

I love this following quote from the book and let me end this post by sharing it with you:

“That person then, whoever it may be, whose mind is quiet through consistency and self-control, who finds contentment in himself, who neither breaks down in adversity nor crumbles in fright, nor burns with any thirsty need nor dissolves into wild and fertile excitement, that person is the wise one we are seeking, and that person is happy.”

Check out other LinkedIn posts by Phu Nguyen:

• Airline Leaders On Keeping Up With Millennials
• Leadership Insights for Budget Airlines' Growth in Asia
• "Sorry, I'm Also A Victim"
• How's Your Flight
• The Flying Data
• Straight From The Top

About: Phu Nguyen is the conference manager of the Aviation Festival Asia series. She creates content and connects leaders from full-service airlines, low-cost carriers and airports across APAC and beyond.