In Reply to: Re: Growing up, my journey, responsibility posted by Laura on November 01, 2004 at 19:39:04:
Sorry to be unkind, but statements like yours make it seem like you still have much of the cult you inside you.
I don't believe you can build "character" by telling yourself nice little ditties like "Be kind to unkind people- they need it the most." Character is built on a lot more than that. Among other things it is built on allowing yourself to be yourself, and growing from there. You allow yourself every freedom to make a mistake, including allowing yourself to choose not to be kind today because you deserve a break from being kind all the time to people who aren't kind back. You try out your options and see how it feels, reflect and learn from it.
Being able to stop being so kind, speak up for yourself and put your foot down against nasty unkind people is also an important character trait. We don't have to be positive and kind all the time. Even an angry negative impatient proud bitch is a valid character, and can be just the qualities you need from someone in certain situations.
About every one of those "qualities you mentioned I have trouble seeing as stand-alone "good qualities". TF encouraged false humility, a completely distorted sense of self vs selflessness (self is a good thing), fake happiness, forced sacrifice and giving, very selective application of patience, paranoic diligence and fear of outsiders, zombified obedience they called conviction, loser kindness, stay in the victory positiveness for no matter what horrors they put you through, and hard work at futile projects which were make believe missionary work.
To me character traits come in sets. A leader may be good at leading, but have a hard time paying attention to details. Therefore he has more patience for leading the bigger picture than getting bogged down in details. Patience for somethings, impatience for other things. That is his character, and his quality, good or bad. Perhaps when growing up his friends found him bossy by nature, always assuming he was king over everybody else. But everyone who knew him knew he was going to make something out of himself and lead a big successful company someday. That's character, the "good" and the "bad" and it's just how you use it that matters.