Lately, I’ve found myself watching people a little more closely – not in judgment, but in curiosity. And these observations have led me to think about a word that seems to have quietly slipped out of our vocabulary: character.
Once, it was a word spoken often, even with a certain reverence. Like nation building, character building was seen as a shared responsibility. We spoke of how parents shaped it in the home, how teachers reinforced it in classrooms, how books nourished it in silence, and how even a sports coach, with a whistle and a sharp eye, could carve it into a young person’s spirit.
Back then, character was discussed in the context of the community – of being part of something larger than oneself. Today, the conversation has shifted. We speak instead of skills – hard and soft – as if people are machines being fine-tuned for the market. The measures are employability, salary, and promotion. The community has receded from view; even the idea of society feels faint, like an old photograph fading in the sun.
The family still remains, but here too the language has changed. Loyalty is celebrated, but the other virtues – honesty, courage, fairness, responsibility – don’t seem to get the same light. Perhaps this is what happens when the market doesn’t just visit our lives, but takes up residence – shaping our conversations, colouring our priorities, and slowly rewriting what we value.
It’s no surprise, then, that conversations feel thinner now. They skim the surface – fashion trends, celebrity gossip, the rise and fall of sports stars, and politics that is less about ideas and more about the marketing of fear and hatred.
And so I wonder: where does one go for deeper waters?
Perhaps the answer lies in the quiet companionship of books – those patient, unhurried spaces where character still matters, where it is tested, broken, rebuilt, and, sometimes, redeemed.
Maybe, if we can bring back even a fraction of those old conversations – about what it means to be trustworthy, to stand for something, to be remembered for more than our skills – we might find that character was never truly lost. It was simply waiting for us to start looking for it again.
An ordinary life 
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