Val Saksornchai

Brain Pickings: What is Character? Debunking the Myth of Fixed Personality

Who am I? What is my character? What is my personality? These are questions that intrigue or trouble me according to the mood of the day. And I have been known to let myself be crushed under the weight of their unanswerability at the worst of times.

My constant preoccupation with the subject makes Maria’s entry on it all the more interesting. I particular like the following snippet, attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue… Temperament is the iron wire on which the beads are strung