Oh, how easy it is to be concerned with how you appear to others – not only physically, but intellectually and morally. This happens to me way more than I would like to admit. I catch myself thinking about how my actions appear to others, if I seem like a “good” person, if my involvement is good enough for my resume. Embarrassingly, I sometimes wonder if people walking up and down Commonwealth Avenue look at me and think to themselves, “Wow, she is on a mission. She must be really busy doing important things,” whenever I am rushing after class to a meeting and then to work. I get stuck on ways that I can virtually show the world my full and diverse agenda of work, extracurricular involvement, class, fitness, etc.
“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are.” – John Wooden
The only person I need to prove myself to is me. I have taken a step back and reflected on what aspects of my life are making me feel happy versus what seems to be dragging me down. Ashamed, I realize that I have spent a good amount of energy on trying to qualify myself – to impress others with what is going on in my life. Whether or not I meet the proper qualifications of others, I need to stay true to myself – to my character – by doing what I do for the right reasons. Putting this pressure on myself to appear as the “sophisticated and organized woman who is just too busy to wait in the Starbucks line, so she brings her own coffee everywhere in a ceramic mug, yet still has time to meet her best friend for lunch to give genuine and empowering advice AND makes her mom’s birthday card five days early so her mom will receive it the night before the celebration” has made me put more effort into my reputation than my character. My character can entail all of these things described above, but it will NEVER be effective if I continue to give power to labels.
I associate labels with reputation and passion with character. It is important to decipher WHY you are doing the things that you are supposed to be passionate about to eliminate the possibility of doing something because it “looks good.”
I was standing outside of Winthrop Elementary School in Dorchester when I read the quote mentioned previously on the outside of the building. I couldn’t walk into the school without taking a photo of it because it hit so close to home for me. The mural allowed for me to reflect on my morals and my character and really think about why I do the things that I do. It helped me to differentiate character and reputation.