Should I Date Someone Who . . .

Two Chis: What is Character?

Google it. One of the first pages that comes up is about the “Six Pillars of Character,” which is based on the following:

• Trust
• Respect
• Responsibility
• Fairness
• Caring
• Citizenship

An easy way to remember this is that it sort of spells out “terrific.” If you want to be a good judge of character, then keep this mental checklist in your head. If you try to sort everyone around you according to this rubric, you might be surprised by the results.

The reason I picked character and not something else, like values, is that I believe character is universal. Everybody knows what it’s like to suffer from someone who is disrespectful or not trustworthy. And no amount of attitude-readjustment or values-shifting is going to change your appetite for bad characters.

Values are a little more specific to me, and I’ll handle the values question in the Q&A section of this book.