July 2005
With Gentleness for All
Gentleness is showing consideration to everyone: friends and enemies. Your enemies might someday become your friends.
Communicate Care
Gentleness affects everything from handling equipment to maintaining relationships. A slammed door, a careless insult, a painful practical joke, and a phone thrown in frustration communicate disrespect and harshness to others.
At home, the way you treat family members reveals more about your character than most other interactions because individuals tend to be least guarded with family members. Further, the atmosphere of gentleness you establish has a huge impact on your quality of life and the durability of your possessions. Practice gentleness at home-- if you can do it at home, you can do it anywhere.
Gentleness with coworkers helps to build trust within an organization. When a person treats even a few others poorly, it can cause loss of trust among the whole team. Customers too will measure the dependability of an organization by the courtesy with which they are treated and the unity they see among those within the organization.
Finally, your gentleness will be tested by how you respond to others in your community. Whether you are dealing with business competitors, personal friends, or fellow drivers, the kindness you show during high pressure situations reveals your internal commitment to gentleness. Open a door for someone carrying a package, give directions to someone who is lost, drive defensively for the benefit of yourself and those around you, and use a controlled tone of voice when talking.
Make a commitment to act with the same consideration, care, and respect you wish others would demonstrate. When you're provoked to resort to harshness, remember the hidden cost, and refocus on your responsibility to show a better way.
The Gift of Time
Help the children around you invest their summertime in pursuits more productive than television, computer games, or mischief.
Time is a resource everyone receives and spends at an equal rate. However, you cannot store or recover time. You must spend it in one way or another.
Practice orderliness this month by cleaning out your storage spaces and looking for unused items to give away or sell. Give older children responsibility to find a donation center or coordinate a "garage sale." These projects can provide valuable experience in advertising, accounting, and practicing good social skills.
Your family could also start a "Character Club" for the summer. Send invitations to the families in your neighborhood, and meet each week for refreshments, stories, songs, and games with a character focus. The Character First! Education curriculum contains many ideas.
Ask a local nursing home if you and your children can deliver special treats to the residents. Perhaps you can sing or recite something that will encourage them as well.
Other opportunities to build character abound. You could help clean up an elderly neighbor's yard, volunteer at a homeless shelter, write your senator or congressman, send a care package to soldiers overseas, paint the bathroom, or read a good book. Help your children improve themselves and look for opportunities to make someone’s day a little bit brighter.
By Robert Greenlaw
"All-American" Cities of Character
Communities of Character, Orangeburg County, South Carolina, and Georgetown County, South Carolina, received the National Civic League's 2005 All-America City Award.
The award honors jurisdictions in which the entire community has worked together to "demonstrate successful resolution of critical community issues." Ten municipalities received the award.
Writing for The Times and Democrat, Austin Cunningham listed many factors that contributed to Orangeburg County winning the award: a quality medical center, hard-working businesspeople, a vigorous law enforcement community, and the availability of education. "Weaving through all these impressive assets," he said, "is a theme,… the fact that we're a Community of Character. Hundreds of impassioned people are telling the story of the character trait for that month, every month, year in and year out, never a pause."
These efforts include putting together a state-wide conference on character, publishing monthly articles about community members who demonstrate exemplary character, and maintaining an active character council to help coordinate the efforts of businesspeople, educators, civic leaders, and others.
To learn how people in your community can join forces and experience similar positive results, attend the 2005 International Building Cities of Character Conference. For more information, go to http://www.charactercities.org/bcoc
By Joshua Jantz
