...hands

In his book, Character Is Destiny: The Value of Personal Ethics in Everyday Life, Pepperdine professor Russell Gough is emphatic about the virtue of personal accountability and the importance of recognizing our power and responsibility to shape our own character, and thus our future, by consciously choosing our words, deeds, and attitudes.

One chapter builds on the diary of Anne Frank, written while she was hiding from the Nazis. This precocious 15-year-old wrote that "the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands."

This is such a vital point. 

Everywhere we see evidence that we're becoming a nation of unaccountable victims, whiners, and wimps all too ready to pass off responsibility to someone else.

Satirist Ambrose Bierce poked fun at this tendency when he defined responsibility as "a detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck, or one's neighbor." 

The parade of recently indicted CEOs added a new object of blame to this list ("It was the people who worked for me!") as they claimed to be victims rather than perpetrators of frauds that enriched them.

Everywhere we turn, we see people blaming personal shortcomings and social ills on circumstances beyond their control or on an irresponsible media, greedy businessmen, corrupt politicians, irresistible economic pressures, and every manner of psychological syndrome.

Even while facing likely death from an unspeakably evil regime, Anne Frank knew no external power could make her become a bad or good person. She knew she had choices, including how to react—in actions and attitudes—to circumstances beyond her control.

What temptations we resist and surrender to are always a matter of choice. 

Each of us can be as good as we are willing to be.

-michael josephson