Character is composed of a variety of elements that define its many aspects. Integrity, honesty, trust, loyalty, and humility all contribute to this complex concept. Today’s quote highlights this important aspect of the different qualities of character – it can take a long time to build them and allow others to have faith in your character, but one serious mistake among any of them and you will no longer be viewed as having good character. Rebuilding trust or integrity (or any other aspect of character) is far harder than building it initially if it can be done at all.
We all make mistakes, and it is a wise leader who knows when forgiveness and reestablishing trust is appropriate. It can also be appropriate, at times, to be extremely cautious when trusting the character of another. “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” is a familiar adage. Another familiar one, to many, is that when considering forgiveness, some number approaching “70 times seven” is the correct standard to use. When you realize that the context of that saying considered “7” to be the number of completeness, it is like us saying that you should forgive a gazillion times. Forgiving some things, even once, can be difficult for us.
This brings us to know that today is Rainbow Bridge Remembrance Day – a day dedicated to remembering our many pets that have crossed over to the great farm in the sky. Our pets become part of our family and their loss can feel just as extreme as the loss of other loved ones. I have often said that God gave us dogs so that we humans could learn an important lesson about unconditional love. When we realize the scope of “unconditional” being so absolute, do you ever wonder how many times our pets had to forgive us for the bad day that caused us to treat them less kindly than we should have? Their ability to love unconditionally demonstrates the level of forgiveness we need to show, even 70 time seven, when judging the character of another. Certainly, caution is appropriate when someone has demonstrated weak character. That doesn’t change our need to love unconditionally and forgive as often as possible, while trusting circumspectly.
