Everybody loves a character. They can be the life of a party. That word, character, has many different sides. There is a character in a story. That is an imaginary person who we could all admire or hate. A figment of our imagination. OK, that’s not so easy to have as a real friend.
There is another kind of character. That fellow that entertains everyone with his or her flamboyant statements or risky antics. This character is someone you might spend time around for a while but you probably wouldn’t lend your car to them. Or if you did lend them money or your car, you would worry about the results. Risky.
This kind of character is not someone you would want to be too close to, if you look at the trail of odd behaviors and scattered results of their own life. Loose beliefs in right or wrong, stories that are exciting and outrageously entertaining, but probably unbelieveable. Someone like that is probably not to be trusted, one could think. Outrageous lies can is fun for a while but then the fun wears off and you are still left with real life.
When you find someone in your life that lives as that kind of larger than life character, almost like someone in a cheap novel, you probably would keep them at a distance. Fun to watch at a distance, but not in my neighborhood, as the saying goes.
Life is messy at best, and having that kind of “character” to mess it up more is like living with Russian roulette. You know, the game with only one bullet in the cylinder, and every time it spins and you click the trigger, a direct chance for disaster.
There is another meaning for the word character, as in a character building experience. That is the most useful meaning in this real life.
I like character building experiences, where each of us can learn by choosing wisely, and not playing with the disaster of Russian roulette in this real game of life.