“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Beyond the Quote (18/365)
It’s easy to be a good person when everything in life is good. When everything in the house is working beautifully and you can sit on the couch and watch your favorite TV show without interruption? When you go out to dinner and your table is beautifully set, the service is impeccable, and the food is amazing? When you go to work and you get along with everyone, you feel like you’re producing your best work, and your boss is thrilled?
It’s in situations like these when being the person you want everybody to see is easy: someone who is smiling, fun, relaxed, patient, hard working, caring, and kind. But, for the same reason that it’s so easy to embody those characteristics when circumstances are comfortable and convenient, we also need to remember that those same characteristics can just as easily be lost when things get hard.
Trying to watch your favorite TV show but the dog ate and destroyed the remote? Went out to eat but there’s a 45 minute delay on the table that you put a reservation on? Got called into your bosses office and got yelled at for poor performance? All-of-a-sudden smiling isn’t so easy. You might feel yourself getting a whole lot less fun, relaxed, and patient, eh? Maybe instead of being caring and kind to others, you might start being short and rude. Shoot, why work hard to fix anything at all when life keeps throwing challenges and controversies at you? Much easier to just yell, fight, gossip, moap, and maybe even quit right?
Hopefully, you thought: wrong. Because trying circumstances and challenging situations aren’t the creators of character, they are the revealers of character. Hopefully, you can see the power of being able to exhibit kindness, patience, love, and forgiveness even in the hardest of situations. Hopefully, you know that your character is just that: yours—and that you have the ability to make up your mind, change your mind, commit to believing ideas, and recommit to believing new ideas. Hopefully, you’ll take a step back and think twice about what actions you want to take immediately following times of challenge, controversy, and hate.
Think about this: Are you going to learn more about a person based on how they treat the person who can’t do anything for them or how they treat the person they envy, think is cute, want to impress, or otherwise care about in some way? Will you learn more about a person based on how they drive on clear roads or when when traffic is bad and people keep cutting them off? Do you think you’ll get a better understanding of a person’s character based on what they say about the people they like behind their backs or the people they don’t like?
Reflect on this: How might you act if you were hated, ostracized, ridiculed, demeaned, threatened, and even attacked, for no reason other than the color of your skin—something you had zero control over in your life? Would you respond back with love, inclusion, kindness, warmth, empowerment, and peaceful protest? Or might you respond with the opposite? In memory of Martin Luther King Jr., let’s choose to be bigger than our knee-jerk emotions. Let’s be the masters of our fate and controllers of our destiny and deliberately choose how we want to respond to the challenges and controversies of our lives. Not with more darkness, as Dr. King would say, but with more light.
Read Next: Top 10 Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes
Don't Let the Motivation Stop There...!
Join our newsletter and get the BEST of what we post every week. Here's an example. Like? Sign up.
[amp-optin id=42297]