"Character is an essential tendency"

Playwright Sam Shepard once said, “Character is an essential tendency. It can be covered up, it can be messed with, it can be screwed around with, but it can’t be ultimately changed. It’s the structure of our bones, the blood that runs through our veins.” I think this quotation rings true for anyone who’s ever had anyone in their life they had seen the good and the potential in, someone they had hoped they could change, or had hoped cared enough to change for them. We hang onto the honorable moments, when they do the right thing, when the parent shows up for the baseball game when we thought they would not, when the stranger holds the door for the elderly lady, when the boyfriend calls just to say “I love you”, and we are reminded of the glimmer of hope that is the good that lies in all people. And we start to believe that they are inherently good, that there is no bone in their bodies that could ever hurt us. We want so badly to believe this and we allow their goodness to encompass us. We forget the moments of stubbornness, of ridicule, of the unanswered and unreturned phone calls and of the tears that exist in all relationships. We choose to ignore the negative parts of their character. We choose to believe we will never be lied to, we will never be abandoned, and most dangerously, we choose to believe that whatever flaws exist in others and ourselves, by simply ignoring them, will disappear. We forget that character is an essential tendency and choose to believe instead that love is a more powerful one. The only love that is inherent is self-love, a concept that only perpetuates the problem. If mankind had more love, consideration, and concern for his neighbor, his child, or his lover than himself, war would be nonexistent, children would not be hungry, and families would not be broken. Unfortunately, because human beings are flawed, because they are not perfect, this utopia will never exist. I am not suggesting that we even attempt to strive for the perfection in our peers and ourselves, but instead to recognize the flaws that exist in our characters and to take into consideration how they affect our children, our lovers, and even strangers. Notice that it hurts your grandmother and makes her feel ignored when you don’t answer or return her phone calls, notice that when you lie to your girlfriend you are making her feel secure in a false reality, notice that when choose to be selfish to your own needs above those of others you are destroying a relationship. We are all guilty of all these things, and I think the goal should be not to try and change them on principle, but to recognize them and how they are affecting ourselves, others, and the world we want to create and live in. Know that we cannot change others, that we cannot even change ourselves, but what we can change is our interactions with and how we treat others, thus changing one relationship at a time. We must give up on the hope that we can change people, that love and good will conquer all, because it won’t. The only truth and consistency that exists is the in balance between good and evil, and in the choice we have to recognize and decide between them.