Who a person is determines what will happen and what they can do. It’s true in sports. It’s true in politics. It’s true in business. No matter how talented a person is, how great the incentives, how great the system around them—in the end, character is everything. It can’t be hidden. It can’t be compensated for.
It comes out.
Your job as a parent, as you seek to create a better world for your kids and raise them to be good in that world, is to value character. To teach it to them. To model it for them. To reward it when you see it in them. Yes, you want them to be smart. Yes, you want them to be ambitious. Yes, you want them to be creative and hardworking. But these traits are worthless if not yoked behind good character.
We’re seeing the costs of ignoring that fact in every facet of life right now. We need to fix it. And the fix starts at home.
—Heraclitus