Character…
Recently a passenger on a cruise ship said three words to me during a private whiskey tasting and until today I could not shake them.
I just got back from that Alaska cruise with 500 people from all over the world, all of us there for the same thing to get close enough to a glacier to hear that thunderous crack and watch it calve into the sea. What most people don’t think about while they’re filming it on their phones is that the ice breaking off had been traveling for roughly 4 million years to cover about 79 miles. Four million years of pressure, snowfall, and time, compounding quietly, until one day it lets go all at once in front of 500 strangers with cameras. Hold that thought – it matters later.
Here’s the thing about me and 500 strangers, though – my wife will tell you straight up, I’m not exactly a social butterfly when it comes to personal interactions. Out of that entire boat, there were maybe a handful of people I’d actually want to sit down and have dinner with. So yes, on this trip she got genuinely frustrated with me more than once. But credit where it’s due, she’s very sociable and convinced me to go on this cruise, knowing also that I don’t like cold weather to join a small group and it actually worked! Without her, I’d probably still be back in San Diego holed up in my man cave, stuck in business mode, never coming out.
But there was one couple that joined our group of eight and honestly, they just lit the whole thing up. There was something about them – like catching a bit of sun on a gray, rainy day. The more days that went by, the more my wife and I found ourselves wanting to hang around them. The husband and I did a whiskey tasting one night and somehow ended up in a much deeper conversation than I usually have with even my old buddies – about being a dad, about what it actually means to be a role model for your kids.
Then he drops the line, “Characters with character.” Said it kind of offhand, no big buildup. Maybe it was the whiskey talking. But those three words started rattling around in my head from the moment we said goodbye in Vancouver.
On my second day back home, he texted me, reminding me to read a Christmas letter he’d received, written by someone from the neighborhood where he was raised. I finally sat down and read it, and it hit me hard – brought tears to my eyes. It was written by one of six kids from a financially challenged family, describing how my friend’s father – the town doctor – showed up every single Christmas Eve of that kid’s childhood with presents and food. Not just once, but every year, no exceptions!
That’s when it clicked. My friend wasn’t just being clever on the ship. He was describing his own father, and how that showed up in him.
And that’s when the glacier made sense to me. A “character” is the colorful, interesting person people notice right away – the one who lights up a dinner table, the one who’s fun to be around. That’s easy to spot in one night. But “character” – the second word – is the ice underneath. It’s the consistency, the pressure, the showing up year after year with nobody filming it, long before anyone ever sees it break loose. You don’t get the calving without four million years of quiet, unglamorous accumulation. You don’t get a man who instinctively treats a stranger’s kid like family without a father who did it every Christmas Eve for years, unnoticed.
That’s the person I want to be, and it’s the standard I want to live by with my own family – not the version of me that shows up bright for one dinner, but the version that’s still showing up, the same way, year after year, whether anyone’s watching or not.
It took two days back home to really hear what my friend told me on that ship. I hear it now and thankful that he shared and followed up with his Dads story.
So here’s the question that’s been stuck in my head ever since that night and I’m asking it to you too:
Are you a Character with Character?
