I saw a sign today that said, “Don’t judge a book by its movie.”  I was immediately struck because it reminded me of something I often think about.

In conversations, I often hear people say, “So and so has a strong personality.” What does that really mean? Does it mean “aggressive,” or “gregarious,” or “audacious”? That can’t be it. I know it can’t, because I have known many people, both male and female, who rarely spoke above a whisper and who tended to avoid the spotlight, but whose humility and quietness was NEVER mistaken for weakness. In fact, most times it takes more strength to be quiet and submissive than to be boisterous and combative. (Ask me how I know!) No…personality is neither strong nor weak…it just is what it is. It’s the complex outer wrapping that each of us clothes our “person” in. It’s the thing that we notice first about other “persons.” It’s the thing that makes us like or dislike what we think we know about other “persons” within hours, or even minutes of meeting them. I believe you can describe personality, but, I mean, really how can personality be quantified in degrees of strength? I don’t believe that it can.

Strength of character…now that’s another thing all together! The character of a person is not a function of his personality. How often have we chosen friends and mates based on their personalities, and then questioned our very ability to make intelligent choices when things got thick and we learned the real character of the person? I’ll answer it for you…hundreds of times! The problem is that character is not presented in the things we do, or even in how we do them. Character is present in the why we do the things we do. It has more to do with intention than pretension. In other words, personality is the movie, but character is the book!

Check out an interesting article on this topic and let me hear from you.

Peace!