Character Does Usually Turn Out to be Destiny
Back in 2022, I went to a Tony Robbins event in West Palm Beach with a friend. Robbins puts on a hell of a show, and if you’re into self-development or want to try walking on hot coals (I’ve done that twice now), it’s a worthwhile event.
Anyway, my friend is freakishly flexible. She will just sort of sit in weird positions I could never get into in the first place, without even thinking about it. Anyway, there turned out to be a yoga practitioner sitting behind us at one point, and we started talking about her casual flexibility. Over the course of that conversation, he recommended some books by a famous Indian guru, Sadhguru, to me. Sadhguru is a smart guy who looks at the world through a very different lens than Westerners, and I got a lot out of his books.
One in particular stuck with me. That was Karma: A Yogi’s Guide to Crafting Your Destiny. We Westerners tend to think of Karma almost as good or bad energy accumulated on some kind of universal ledger. You did a bunch of bad stuff? Well then, the universe is going to pay you back for your bad karma. Sadhguru looks at it in what seems to be a more concrete and practical way:
In other words, what’s karma? It’s the natural consequences of what you think, what you do, how you feel, and how you act, repeated endlessly over time.
Character is like this.
Sometimes people don’t see that because, over the short term, bad character doesn’t seem to have a cost, and good character doesn’t seem to pay off. We see horrible people achieving temporary success, maybe even at a level most of us will never reach, and we shrug our shoulders and go, “What’s the point of being a good guy?”
The truth is that it’s far more complicated than that, and over the long haul, things tend to play out very differently.
For example, let’s use two men as an example. Ronnie and Tommy.
Both of them are happily married, extremely good-looking men, have lots of opportunities to sleep around, and, despite their love for their wives, would enjoy having sex with other women.
Ronnie sleeps around every chance he gets. Tommy thinks it’s wrong to cheat on his wife, so he doesn’t do that.
So, what happens if you set morals completely aside and say, “Who’s having more fun?”
In the short term, it’s probably Ronnie because he’s sleeping with his wife, his secretary, getting drunken hook-ups at the bar, and bagging women at business conventions, while Tommy is being loyal to his wife. Again, setting morals aside, at first it seems like he’s missing out.
However, what tends to happen over the long term? Ronnie gets an STD, gets one of them pregnant, one of them tells his wife, or he leaves his phone unlocked. Next thing you know, his wife finds out and they go through an acrimonious divorce. Then he winds up paying child support, seeing his kids once per month, his wife hates him, her friends hate him, and their teenage daughter detests him for breaking up their family.
On the other hand, how’s Ronnie doing? Still happily married to his wife.
Of course, you can reel off all sorts of caveats and exceptions to this, but this is how character issues play out over time again and again.
It starts out fun and ends badly. Often very badly.
Now, you might say, “But wait a second, some of these people rise so high that maybe the fall is worth it.”
It was probably fun to be Harvey Weinstein, Al Capone, or Bill Cosby before everything went south for them. They had money, fame, and sex. Would you want to be them today, though (Al Capone is dead, but he died in prison, so you get the idea)? If you want to go another level down, look at how things turned out for Osama Bin Laden and Jeffrey Epstein. Not so great, right?
You also have to understand that there’s a toll you see and a toll you don’t.
From the outside looking in, people may look calm and composed. Meanwhile, their mind is consumed with chaos, fear, and trouble. They’re worried about people finding out, about getting caught, and facing consequences.
As a side note, this hints at one of the unspoken things I think a lot of non-Christians misunderstand about Christianity. They look at Christianity as a bunch of rules that keep you from doing the “fun stuff.” However, even the Bible acknowledges that sin can be enjoyable while you’re doing it. It’s those long-term consequences that can get you.
For example, although he has been doing an amazing job in his 2nd term, Donald Trump has certainly cut some moral corners in his life. Although he seems like one of the most unfazed people you’ve ever seen when it comes to drama, pretty clearly it worries him a lot more than you’d think if he said this:
Of course, if Trump believes in God, genuinely repents and asks Jesus to forgive him, Christians believe he’ll go to heaven – but given what we’re talking about, if even someone like Donald Trump is worried about the consequences of doing the wrong thing, what hope do the rest of us have of avoiding it?
Very few people shoplift, lie to get their way, or beat their wives ONE TIME. They do it over and over, and guess what? It wears on them mentally over time and usually catches up with them. When it does, they often pay a much bigger price than they would have if they’d just done the right thing all along.
If you want me to tell you that being a good guy will ALWAYS pay off in the end or that the bad guys ALWAYS get what’s coming to them on this side of death, I can’t tell you that because it’s not true. Some people smoke two packs of cigarettes a day and live long, healthy lives, while other people do every single thing right for their health and drop dead because of some weird, genetic defect at 40. This is part of the randomness of life.
However, you do only have one life. Do you want to do all the wrong things and hope a lucky fluke saves you from disaster? Do you want to live it in a way that you can’t be proud of, that would disgust everyone if they knew the truth? Do you want to spend your life taking advantage of other people or making the world a better place? You should do the right thing because over the long haul, character usually turns out to be destiny.
Without a bedrock of moral foundation the individual will simply steer their moral view to that which provides them the most personal benefits… and selfishness greed prevails. Then as selfish greed demonstrates good returns, the moral foundation is corrupted to incorporate those behaviors that generate selfish returns. The desired ends always justify the means.
It is the ubiquitous race to the moral bottom, even as material gains are appropriated.
Without any material adverse consequences, the bad character behavior is replicated and mainstreamed as the new morality.
I believe that our national morality started to decline the day after President Bill Clinton, the leader of the free world, sat there on national TV and told a bald faced lie that he did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinski. He basically told the world that any behavior can be considered morally right if you can get away with it.
Character, in my view, is identified not by the superficial stuff (e.g., mean Tweets); but the substantive indication that a person routinely pursues their own selfish wants in a way that causes material harm to others… and they know this but continue to justify their behavior.
Very well said, John. Character matters for the individual, as you so eloquently state, but it matters in business, and in society. Our republic in particular, and western civilization in general, depend on the high trust, moral man.