The Only Thing That Counts

Nice Is Different Than Good

“There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness. This mysterious Unity and Integrity is Wisdom, the Mother of all, Natura Naturans. There is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that is a fountain of action and of joy. It rises up in wordless gentleness and flows out to me from the unseen roots of all created being...”

—Thomas Merton

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The question of character has been on my mind a lot lately.

Photo by Fallon Michael on Unsplash

It began with a recent class trip with one of my kids. My son asked me to tag along as a chaperone on an overnight field trip with his classmates. I thought: Sure, fine, no big deal. I can roast some hot dogs and make sure a bunch of sweaty seventh graders don’t drown.

How naive of me. What ensued was a crash course in human nature. On that trip, I witnessed a series of unfortunate events and atrocities that left me questioning whether or not human beings are innately good or bad. My conclusions were not favorable.

On this trip, I saw young people acting in a manner that I can only describe as “deplorable.” You may think me too harsh or out of touch with the times, and you may be right, but all I know is what I saw left me speechless.

I mean, it was a scene straight out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I observed children disrespecting authority, stealing, lying, and acting as if the rules did not apply to them at all. I witnessed cruelty, selfishness, and a general disregard for other people.

Now, to be fair, they weren’t all bad all the time. Most of the kids would smile and say nice things to your face, but then behind your back, say terrible things about you. They would sneer and jeer and make fun of everything and everyone. But they were nice about it, which made it not only hard to catch but also especially pernicious. I know this, because I was one of the objects of their ridicule.

Stunned by this behavior and desperately seeking explanation, I went to the teachers on the trip, and they all agreed the students’ behavior was a problem. But they shrugged in a what-can-you-do sort of way, telling me how many times they had tried to correct their behavior to no avail.

Well, I thought, I know what you can do. You can run this thing right up the school flagpole and see if there’s any hope of improvement.

After the trip, I spoke with the administration and told them a number of bad eggs were ruining the fun for the whole bunch. Not long after, I heard news of some kids being expelled, suspended, or asked not to return to school the next year.

In light of all this, I told my son, “You’re a good kid and I’m proud of you. But goodness doesn’t mean just following the rules when others are watching. It means doing your best to be the best person you can be—especially when no one is watching.”

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Nice Versus Good

A couple weeks later, my stepdaughter was part of the stage crew in a high school production of the musical “Into the Woods.”

Having seen it a few times now, what always strikes me about this show is the maturity of its themes. It is, essentially, a musical about growing up.

In particular, the run-in between Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf has intrigued me. The more I listen to the lyrics in the song “I Know Things Now,” the more aware I become of how hard becoming an adult is.

In the scene, a little girl loses her innocence but gains something in return: her maturity. She walks away after the slaying of Wolf with both a knife and a shawl made from his fur, giving up her inexperience in exchange for hard-won wisdom.

She sings, “And I know things now…” then lists the lessons she’s learned, including “do not put your faith in a cape and hood” and most importantly that “nice is different than good.”

This is what I am attempting to teach my children. “Nice” is a game of approval and appeasement. “Good” is something different.

You can call this what you want. Morality. Doing the right thing. But I choose to call it character, which is the sum total of who you are and what you do, not just what you say you are or what other people think of you.

Character is not necessarily good or bad—it just is. You can, for example, be a person of low moral character or a person of high moral character, but the worst kind of person is the one who thinks they’re one thing and is another.

This is why self-inquiry is so important. “Know thyself,” the Greeks encouraged, which is no small task and just might take a lifetime. We have to get to know ourselves and all our disparate parts and then find a way to make the pieces fit. I like how Parker Palmer put it in one of his books, describing integrity: “It is better to be whole than it is to be good.”¹

Character is the sum total of who you are and what you do, not just what you say you are or what other people think of you.

In a world where it’s easy to hide what you are, “goodness” is a matter of opinion. But character is a question of how willing you are to look into your own depths and not turn away when what you see disturbs you. It is not enough to be good—although that’s a fine start—we must seek to understand ourselves and aim to develop that self, sharpening it like a knife. That is the work of becoming a better human, of developing one’s own character.

I’ve had to grapple with this matter more than once in my own life. “Am I a good person?” is a question that comes up often for me. But I wonder now: Is goodness the goal? Or are we capable of more? When I think of whether or not I am a good person, what I’m really asking is, “Am I the kind of person most people would like?” And the answer is no, I am not. I do and have done plenty of things others would not agree with, understand, or even approve of.

For the most part, I’m okay with that. There is, I’ve learned, something better than the good opinion of others, and that something is wholeness.

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A Life Worthy of Your Own Respect

When I was going through a tumultuous divorce and what can be described only as an existential crisis, I was wrestling with these issues. During that time, I ended up meeting with a client who wanted to write a book on self esteem.

“Self esteem,” he told me, “is not just saying nice words to yourself about yourself. It’s living a life worthy of your own respect.”

That resonated with me, especially then. Yes, I thought, that’s what I’m trying to do. I am trying to live a life worthy of my respect, trying to earn my own approval. After years of trying to get everyone else’s, and hating myself in the process, that felt like a goal worth pursuing.

It wasn’t too long after this that I was having lunch with my friend and agent Stephen Hanselman.

Steve and I share a similar background in that we both studied religion and philosophy in college, his experience being a Master’s degree from Harvard Divinity and mine a Bachelor’s degree from a small liberal arts college in the midwest. Which is to say: our pedigrees are not the same.

Steve even translated the sayings of the Stoics from the original Greek for the bestselling book he coauthored with Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic. All I mean to say here is that he knows his stuff and is no slouch when it comes to existential quandaries.

During our lunch at the illustrious Harvard Club in midtown Manhattan (which is something like a scene from Harry Potter—you step off the bustling streets surrounding Times Square and disappear into a sanctuary of wood panels and the musty smell of intelligence and privilege), I prodded Steve about his spiritual convictions, asking him what ultimately mattered, what was absolutely true.

His answer was simple: “I subscribe to what the ancients thought, that it all comes down to character.”

I’ve come to agree with him on that and with what many others have concluded over the centuries. What a person’s life consists of—what we should ultimately aim at perfecting—is our character.

So, when a major publisher contacted me about collaborating on a book with a decorated four-star general on this very subject, I was all in.

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Here Comes the General…

Working with Stanley McChrystal, or “The General” as he was colloquially called around our house, was a master class in integrity.

The work was quick and intense, but there was an ease to it. Stan respected my boundaries, never missed a meeting, and worked tirelessly on the project while still carving out time for his granddaughters and wife. He exercised daily, getting up sometimes at two or three a.m. just to get a workout in before an early morning flight, ate one meal every day, and held himself to a high standard.

Despite this disciplined nature, he was gracious and easy going. He seemed to expect more of himself than he did of others, offering patience and kindness with people’s shortcomings while nudging them towards their potential. He rarely, if ever, criticized my work and often asked, “What can I be doing better?”

About halfway through our six-month project, I realized that this client had far more to teach me than I would ever impart to him.

When we began our work together, the book was about thinking: a collection of thoughts inspired by seventy years of life and fifty-plus years of combined military service and experience in the business world. Then, it became about belief: the convictions we hold that define a person’s life. Finally, after who knows how many revisions, it was decided it would be about character—aptly titled On Character: Choices That Define a Life.

I learned a lot from this man. One notable lesson was the importance of taking a side. McChrystal is not necessarily a political man, but he believed life was filled with imperfect choices, and it was cowardly to sit on the sidelines while others did the hard work of fighting for what they believed in.

He told me stories of military operations gone awry, explained his complicated relationship with the media, and often said, “I have no interest in relitigating the past.” He saw life as a straight line headed in only one direction with the same final destination for all.

The General was, in many ways, a paradox. He had no fear of death but enjoyed life. He was humble without being meek, a deep thinker who often remarked on how little he knew. He could see the many sides of any issue but was not hesitant to take a stance when needed. He was better than he seemed.

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“Nature In Its Highest Form”

When you write a book, you eventually get so sick of the project that you have no choice but to chuck it in the trash or publish it. Thanks to our editor and publishing team, we did the latter.

By the end of our collaboration, the General and I were both tired of rereading the same words over and over, forgetting who had written what and not really caring. We were done. It was time to ship.

At the end of any project, I am happy to receive the finished product in the mail, put it on the shelf, and never look at it again. For me, the end result is almost irrelevant; what matters most is the process, the work people don’t see. What they can’t see. I suppose character works this way, too.

Emerson called it “nature in its highest form.”² The best men, he said, are greater than their deeds, more than they appear to be. That’s true—and it’s rare.

Most people seem better than they actually are. Spend some time with them, and you’ll see. Most people don’t do what they say. They lie in little ways, knowing they won’t get caught, refusing to hold themselves to a standard higher than the common understanding of what it means to be “a good person.”

But we know what we are capable of. A man, I think, can sense his potential, smell it like a predator wandering the forest. He may not know what he seeks, but he knows he must find it. A good man will spend his life searching for this grail. A bad one will give up and settle for easy answers: money, sex, power, you name it.

I don’t know if this is true for women—it very well may be—but as a man, I know that what I could be haunts me. It plagues and pushes me, taunting me to get up early for no seemingly good reason and contribute something to this godforsaken world. It demands a certain restlessness, a maddening perfectionism. It ribs me when I cheat the line, when I fabricate the truth, or “phone it in.” It always demands my best.

I am mortal, of course, so there are plenty of times when I fall short of what I expect of myself. But I aspire to be more than I was yesterday, and this gives me a sense of something to aim at. I have no illusions of grandeur (or at least fewer than I did in my twenties), but I know it is good to do more than succumb to the status quo. I still want to earn my own respect, and I have a ways to go yet.

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What’s the Point?

Why share all this now? Because I believe we are in a crucial time in both America and in the world. Everywhere we look, there are seeds of growing discontent, increased fear and paranoia, distrust in institutions. The threat of war, economic instability, and all-out chaos looms.

I am not a fear monger or a doom-spreader, and in the end I believe it’ll all be okay, but we must be students of the past and present. We have a responsibility to participate in our moment in history. What I believe we need more than ever is men and women of character. We need substance, people who want to be better on the inside than they look on the outside.

This was all I wanted my son to see after that school trip. It’s all I know, really. It’s what my father taught me.

When I was a college graduate with very little savings and limited prospects, I got a job in another state and needed a car to get there. I had all of $1100 to my name and found one for exactly that amount.

When I went to buy it, I brought a check to the seller’s house and he told me he only took cash. I told the man the funds were in the bank and that he could go cash it right now if he wanted, but he refused, telling me he did not know me and needed the cash.

I turned away, feeling dejected, like I should have known better, and returned to the truck with my dad. We immediately drove to the bank, got the money, and came back within the hour.

When I pulled back into that driveway, the man told me he’d just sold the car I wanted to another buyer. I was still learning the ropes of this adulthood thing and clearly had a lot to learn. I felt as if I’d done something wrong. My dad, however, leaned out the window of his Ford F-150 as we pulled away, cigar clenched between his teeth, and shouted in his Chicagoan accent, “Ya know, there’s such a thing as integrity!”

I never forgot that moment, not because I was in the right (I wasn’t), but because my father has always been a fierce advocate for me, inspiring me to not just succeed but to always do my best and try to do the right thing. Don’t lie, don’t cheat, always keep your word.

My dad was not a particularly educated man, but he knew his children deserved a better life than he’d had. He encouraged me to read, challenged me in my studies, and supported whatever I did—from my days as an amateur thespian in college to my decision to tour the country with a rock band to my days as a missionary and beyond.

Of course, he and I have had our rows over the years, as all sons and fathers must, but there is no one else I could credit more for helping me understand that what matters in a life—the only thing that truly counts—is character.

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P.S. On Character comes out next week. You can pre-order it here. I was honored to work on this project and am asking all friends, family, and colleagues to support the launch by ordering a copy. It’s that important and that essential.

The book is a series of essays about choices, both small and significant, that define a life. You can read the first few pieces on Amazon now (and of course, it’s available everywhere books are sold). If you pick up a copy, let me know what you think.

1. The Parker Palmer reference comes from a book he wrote called A Hidden Wholeness. The title is inspired by a Thomas Merton quote, the same I used as the epigraph for this piece, which comes from a poem he wrote called “Hagia Sophia.”

2. The Emerson quote and other references come from his second set of essays. The essay mentioned here is called “Character.”