Your “being” or character is determined by what you repeatedly “do”, or the actions you take. Character is the shape your entire being takes because of your habits. It’s the sum of your virtues and vices. It’s what you consistently are. Any action can become a virtue or a vice, depending on the thoughts and feelings that accompany the action.
What you say and do when nobody else is watching. What you fall back to under pressure. Who you are at your core.
Good fictional examples
- Captain America from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)
- “You were chosen not because you are a great soldier, but because you are a good man.”
- Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
- Waymond Wong from Everything Everywhere All At Once
- Ted Lasso from the show of the same name
- Walter Mitty from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
- totally incomplete list
Being good: virtues over vices
If character is a description of your overall enduring choices through time, virtues refer to specific stable qualities of your being, dispositions formed over time by repeated choices. They are an overlap of thought, feeling, and action. They basically explain a pattern of choices.