What can take years to build, but only a slip of the tongue to tarnish?
What can be broken, but never fully repaired?
Cassio in William Shakespeare's Othello found the answer to this.
Reputation, reputation, reputation. It is a complex concept.
We teenagers often find it hard to comprehend the value and consequences of it.
Reputation is mean yet kind, fickle yet loyal, everywhere yet scarce, valuable yet worthless and spontaneous and predictable.
So reputation is the estimation in which someone is held by their peers and community.
A good reputation glitters brighter than gold.
It is a valuable asset, but there is a problem. You do not own your reputation, therefore making it extremely hard to control.
So what is the alternative?
Character. It is the qualities distinctive to an individual. It is the real you.
Character is true and honest, but most importantly, it is controllable and stable.
You own your character. So what do you think is more important? Character or reputation?
Your reputation is in the hands of everyone else around you.
It's what the outside world sees when looking in.
Reputation consists of opinions - opinions people make from watching what you say, what you do and how you react to the happenings around you.
So does it matter what people think of you?Of course!Reputation is one of the most important, invaluable and indestructible assets we have.
When you walk into your job interview, your reputation will have got there well before you did.
Cassio, in Shakespeare's Othello, knew reputation was like the cover to your book.
It is the first thing everyone sees and the first thing they make an opinion on.
Your reputation consists of the decisions you make and the actions you take.
But what sways these decisions and action? Your character does.
Your character is honest and truthful, controllable and stable!So this may seem the perfect way for someone to judge who you are.
Wrong!When other people try to see your character, their view is hazy and tinted by their own opinions and personal views.
The issue with character is only one person knows what it really is. You.
So character and reputation both have their positives and their negatives.
Character is predictable and stable, but only you can see it.
Reputation is unreliable and uncontrollable, but everywhere.
So what is more important?
Character.
The important thing is to know that you are a good person, because if you are, why should it matter what anyone else thinks of you?
If there is one thing to remember for the rest of your life, it would be the words spoken by Polonius, in Shakespeare's Hamlet - words that are still applicable 400 years after they have been written:
''This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.''
