Character

Whoa, I've been surrounded by discussions about character. I've talked about our discussion of the Henry Cloud book on "Integrity" which is about integrity of character. Tonight I was reading a copy of BGC World and there was a discussion on character that also talked about the meaning of the word integrity in the context of character.

However, it was a humerous (to me) comment about character that got me blogging about this tonight. I was watching part of the Gopher football game yesterday and found myself both amused and frustrated. As it turns out, now that there are about 8,000,000 football games on in a given weekend, the quality of the announcers drops... especially when the game involves teams with a grand total of 1 big ten win between them. Anyway, the Gophers scored a touchdown on what was really a great catch. In describing the replay, the announcer said, and I quote, "Character is what you are when no one is watching and Jones showed character on that catch."

I was a bit confused because he must have forgotten there were people in the stadium and also that he was broadcasting to a TV audience -- now, admittedly, I may have been the only one watching a Minnesota / Northwestern football game, but still.... there were more people watching than "no one." I also find it funny that someone's athletic ability implies that they have character (I think there have been one or two examples where the two are not necessarily related).

I realize that I'm tired when things like this seem as funny as this one does to me... perhaps it is my warped sense of humor. I was sitting in my recliner, working on my laptop, all by myself, and I literally said, outloud, "Did he really say that?".

"Character is what you are when no one is watching and Jones showed character on that catch."