Character as Fate

“Character is destiny.” Heraclitus

By: Gabriela Yareliz

“You know it’s fate we are on this train together?” Some unhinged guy said to me. I gave him a look that had him saying I was “aggressive” later on.

It spiraled into something ridiculous until I was able to send him on his way— but it reminded me of my high school self. In life, we grow and evolve.

My younger self was Shakespearean. I could literally recite passages from plays. I still can… The beginning of this blog has remnants of this me. Latin through and through. Did I believe in fate? I did.

This is a really cultural thing. I really do think Latin culture has taken religion and turned a lot of it into superstition. I miss hearing things in Spanish sometimes, and when this feeling overcomes me occasionally, I will put on a podcast in Spanish, and it sometimes makes me feel so weird and out of place with my own culture. Superstitions are deeply entrenched even in the language we use. It’s fascinating to me. It strikes me more clearly now than it ever did before.

While I will agree that life has its synchronicities and divine turning points at times, I am a big believer in “Character is destiny.” Life isn’t so much happening to us as it is a domino effect from so many choices that set the circumstances in motion.

More often than not, our own choices. Even when others make choices that affect us, we choose how we respond. Our choices are rooted in character. Life isn’t some clip of Le battement d’ailes du papillon or Serendipity (even though I love these films!).

I think the world would be different if we took more ownership over life itself. All of life. There is not some destiny imposed on us, but we choose our own destiny, every minute at a time. Anything less than this makes us pawns, victims, trapped in a spiral of events that take us for a ride.

And while many reject the notion of fate, they live as pawns, victims and trapped in a spiral. Sometimes, we succumb out of exhaustion, the desire for a justification to what is easy or seemingly out of our control or the pursuit of a fleeting “magic” we are too lazy to create. We have agency. This is what Viktor Frankl and the film Life is Beautiful are trying to teach us. Even within the worst circumstances, we face choices. And that’s not to say our choices are the same (those are mysteries); it just means we all have choices.

Character is harder than what we feel “magically” appears in our path. Good character is harder than wanting to take everything in sight. Character requires humility, discipline, the ability to turn a boat to take another course or create life in a place that is bleak. Character is a longer and harder road. Cultivating character requires denial and sacrifice. But character shows agency and resilience, which means character is the path to freedom.