Character vs. Reputation

I first encountered this quote as a Facebook meme, but one that stood out as enshrining a particularly useful but counterintuitive truth. I probably don't have the exact wording right, but this is the substance of it:

Worry more about your character than your reputation because your character is who you really are but your reputation is just who people think you are. 

The Internet attributes this quote--as it usually does--to more than one person, but the most frequent attribution is to John Wooden, a basketball coach.

Stoic analysis is useful here. There is a trap one can fall into whereby one can think of reputation as being the sum of one's character. This positions your identity outside of yourself, outside of your control. You may tend to it lovingly, the way a gardener does a flower garden, but there's nothing to stop the errant soccer ball from bouncing into it and crushing the plants therein, or the neighborhood dog from relieving himself on or in it. There is nothing even to stop someone from destroying it out of malice or ill will. You could stand guard by it night and day, but that would mean consuming all of one's life energy in the task, leaving you less time for the functions of life, less time to work and love. And even all your watchful guarding won't prevent plant disease, hail, or a number of other factors from eroding it. 

Worst of all, jealously guarding it as you are, you may come to see life one-dimensionally; you may do harm to others and engage in ugly behavior all in the interest of protecting it. In other words, you may lose your character in your attempt to preserve it, mistaken, as you are, in conceiving of it as reputation.   

Worry more about your character than your reputation. This is indeed a deep and important truth. Thank you, John Wooden.