Character Is a Victory…

From Ivor Griffith comes a short, strong sentence that says much and suggests much more: “Character,” he said, “is a victory, not a gift.” Often we pamper our weaknesses, indulge our appetites and excuse ourselves for failings. But who can decide for us to be better if we don’t decide for ourselves? Who can lift us beyond or own effort? Who can know us as well as we know ourselves? The desire, the intent, the effort is up to us, and a half-hearted, compromising performance is not enough. Rationalization, self-justification, self-indulgence cannot lead to sustained success. “It is no use saying ‘We are doing our best,'” said Winston Churchill, “You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.” And this isn’t a matter of consistency in many decisions⎯of the little things and the large things almost every hour, every instant. “Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds,” said George Eliot. “Our character is but the stamp on our souls of the free choices of good and evil we have made through life.” “You cannot dream yourself into a character;” said James A.Froude, “you must hammer and forge one for yourself.” And one of the greatest lessons to teach our children is the certainty of the sequence of causes and consequences, and our own responsibility for what we are as compared with what we can become. “Some day, in years to come,” said Phillips Brooks, “you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process.” “Character is a victory, not a gift”⎯a very great victory.