Maxim Monday: Test the Character

I feel like this one is incomplete, as in an incomplete sentence. Test the character of what? But I suspect this one is telling us to test the character of the people around us.

Knowing of what sort of character our friends and family are made of is a good idea. Can we trust them? Do their words and actions line up? But I don’t think we actually need to test anyone’s character. If we just pay attention we’ll find that people reveal their character regularly. In my experience, life is full of tests of character; there is no need for me to go adding in extra tests.

Maybe this one means testing our own character. To that I repeat, life is full of challenges and tests of our character. There is no need to set ourselves up for more tests. And yet, when tests and challenges come up, we can embrace them as tests. Sometimes we discover that we’re weaker in some areas or under some circumstances than we realized. So then we can reflect and hopefully strengthen ourselves for the future.

May we all score an A+ in the tests to come.