by Ken Vincent, Featured Contributor
If you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
I WISH I COULD take credit for that little gem of wisdom, but I can’t. It is a quote from Abraham Lincoln.
It seems to me that forming one’s character is rather like making a loaf of bread.
In the case of bread you take a bunch of ingredients, mix them all together, roll them into a ball. Then you stand back and give the mixture time to rise. The next step is to punch it down and let it start over. Then eventually you shove it into a hot oven and let it bake. Then the prudent cook checks on it occasionally. The finished product is a good loaf of bread.
So it is with character. You take ethics, morals, a sense of fairness, honesty, and several other ingredients and mix them together. Let that rise and then life punches it down and you start over. After this process, perhaps several times, you get tossed into the oven of life and baked with stress and pressure. The end result is character. Hopefully, like your loaf of bread, your character turns out well. But once bread is baked that is pretty much it. If it turns out poorly you are just stuck with it.
Character, unlike bread dough, can be changed and “re-baked” if you will. I think the line from a song, “I just dropped in to see what condition my condition is in”, may be a good guide for us all. Character, unlike bread dough is constantly under siege from the outside. Ethics are challenged, honesty and fairness are tested. Therefore we need to drop in occasionally to see how our character is developing. Is that loaf of character what we want it to be? Maybe it is time to adjust the receipt and have a “redo”?
We are all quick to question the character of business and religious leaders, and elected officials, and rightly so. But, let’s be equally quick to examine our own character. Opening the over door too often will spoil a loaf of bread. However, our character can’t be ruined by frequent examination. How often should our character be examined? Should you examine it more frequently as you gain more power?
