Character & Circumstance

I had an interesting conversation this past Saturday at our local Starbucks. It was just intended to be a coffee with a friend, but we started dealing with some far-reaching topics I thought I might share with you.

My friend was recounting a scenario with a person he had hired as a favor to put some extra money in his pocket by providing services to my friend’s company. He found out, along the way, that the individual was collecting a paycheck, but was also collecting personal benefits in his official role. In short, he was receiving extra monetary favors for just doing his job. As he described what was going on, several thoughts occurred to me. The first was, at the risk of over-simplifying, that you can generally speaking identify two types of people — not always ahead of time, by the way: those people who operate out of character and those people who operate out of circumstance.

For the individuals who operate out of character, they center based on fundamental internal values that they bring to just about every circumstance in their lives. The moral compass is internal and the way they handle life, as well as other people in their lives, is based upon who they are and who they perceive themselves to be.

For those individuals who operate out of character, there may be disagreements from time to time, or different points of view, but there is a reliance that the fundamental fabric of the individual will show up irrespective of what the circumstances are at any particular juncture.

The other model is an individual who operates out of circumstance. For that person, the values are primarily external and the primary driver of the decisional matrix is the opportunity which presents itself. For the individual who operates out of circumstance (or opportunity), there can be less reliance that the person will operate based on an internal moral compass and more on what is in the person’s best interest at that particular point in time.

For a person of character, a commitment to do a particular thing trumps any other option that comes up at the last minute. For a person of circumstance, a better offer received later trumps a prior commitment. I’m sure we know people like that in our daily lives.

In any event, we thrashed that concept around for some time — operating through character versus operating opportunistically — and ended up moving on to what could be described potentially as a broader concept.

Again, at the risk of over-simplifying, the thought is that life really isn’t all that complex. It’s individuals who make it complex. The absolutely irrefutable truth is that we are born into this world and, some years or decades later, we will exit this world. And the only thing that fundamentally matters is what happens in between — how we live each day with the days, years, or decades available to us. Some of us will have jobs and others will have careers. Some of us will have accomplishments, and others will get by. Others will have families and others may not. Some will amass wealth, and others will amass memories. Some of us will write books and be well known. Others will lead lives of privacy and obscurity.

Regardless of what happens in the course of our lives, what is absolutely inevitable is that each of us will die and when we do, the only thing that will survive are the memories others have of us and the contributions we’ve made while we were living.

The Starbuck’s conversation Saturday morning was prescient because I was actually headed to the funeral of a friend I had known a number of years ago and with whom I lost contact. He passed away at the all-too young age of 62. I had the opportunity to attend his funeral mass and listen to the many stories which were told about him, many of which I remember because I was there. He did not plan on dying at 62. At the end of the day, most of us do not choose when we will die. But for him, the time came and he had no choice but to oblige.

That time will come for me and that time will come for you. And when it does, would it not be comforting to know that those who hold our memories remember a person who did not just show up in life or who only served their own interests, but who gave life everything they could as a person for others.