The Importance of Character Building
Not the characters in your shitty novel.
I’m talking about your own character. To be an interesting and rounded person you have to have had some interesting and informative life-experiences, all of which collectively add to your personality and approach to life in general. The things that you do and see inform who you are. Events and experiences that are character building can come from almost anywhere, but most of them are universal to all of us.
Some of the most obvious ones;
Driving a shitty car. Only when you’ve driven a car that looks and drives ugly can you appreciate good cars. A lack of features, bad bodywork, unreliable performance and basic undesirability is what you need here. Years of driving showroom-new models or company pool cars is not going to build you any character for later in life. On some level, a crap car teaches you things about being resourceful too, especially if it’s unreliable or has a bunch of strange quirks that you have to live with.
A bad flat or apartment. Most people have lived somewhere shitty at some point in their lives, especially when they were younger. College or university often dumps young people on the cheaper side of town, with unscrupulous and uncaring landlords, in conditions that are less than desirable. You know it’s shit, but you can’t afford to live elsewhere. Sometimes bad housing comes to us when we buy our first place. Like with the bad car, you get resourceful. You learn to adapt. You save and cut corners, you know what to avoid and what to do later in life. You’ll have conversations years later that go something like ‘remember when we used to live next to that freight railway line/upstairs from those junkies/in that shack with rats…’ In a perverse way you’ll be glad you did it.
Being broke. To some degree, most people have experienced a lack of money at some point in their lives. Sometimes you start off like this when you leave home or go to college or university, but often it comes to you after you’ve had money, in the form of redundancy or a change in circumstances. Looking for work and having no money teaches you something about yourself, and let’s face it, being broke in the West is a totally different from the experience elsewhere in the world. In the developed world it usually means a change in lifestyle and a period of job-searching or working hard for little pay, but all of this makes you richer in terms of your character. Not that you’d appreciate it at the time, because being poor sucks. But it certainly teaches you the value of things.
Apu demonstrates the importance of character building – by wearing a skirt and a breast-plate, holding a tarot card and a club.
A job you hate, working for someone you despise. This one is really important, and most people run into it at some point. If you don’t, you’ve either been really lucky or have found your perfect working niche early in life. You need the money so you take the job, but it’s not interesting or rewarding, and to make matters worse the boss is a fucking jerk. This teaches you important people skills, as well as informing you about your career goals (or lack of them, in my case).
The interesting job. This might not necessarily be a good or well paid job, but you enjoyed your time working there. Remember this line from the film American Beauty?
: No, actually it was great. All I did was party and get laid. I had my whole life ahead of me.
That about sums it up. The work might have been dull, but the people you worked with made it worthwhile. No responsibility? Even better, you just take the money and spend it on the stuff that makes you happy, let the jerk boss worry about inventory and tax returns. I worked as a video games tester for a year or so, where all I did was hang around with other gamer nerds, talking about and playing games. The money was bad and it did nothing for me career-wise, but I loved it. Like Lester Burnham flipping burgers, I also spent an entire summer constructing chicken feeders in an agricultural warehouse, just so I had enough money to buy beer and hang out with my mates.
Bad relationships. Thinking back to these will probably make you cringe, but they’ll probably help you out in the long-run. That guy/girl you spent ages chasing and dating, just for it to end painfully and/or humiliatingly? Just tell yourself it was character-building and you’ll see it totally differently. There are mistakes there you’ll never make again. There are things you’ll never say again, or things you will say next time. There are types and models better suited to you, but you didn’t know it at the time. But you do now, because it all helped to build your character.
It’s strange how the things that were essentially bad in our lives take on a new value later on in life. How many times have you seen a piece of shit car that reminded you of one you once drove and thought ‘I used to have one of those…’ , or thought back to the freezing cold apartment that you hated at the time, whilst smiling to yourself? It happens all the time. That’s all character you’ve built for yourself.
Cars, jobs, houses, partners, poverty. I must have missed some other important character-building experiences…
