The Road David Brooks Character Analysis

In author David Brooks’ The Road to Character he combines his experiences with historical anecdotes to live a more purposeful life. After providing numerous stories of well-known historical figures to illustrate his beliefs about character, Brooks concludes with his “Humility Code”. The fourteenth lesson of the humility code was extremely challenging for me. Brooks stresses leaders to “lead along the grain of human nature” and to be a “steward for his organization (that) tries to pass it along in slightly better condition than he found it,” (Brooks 266-67). The most aggravating aspect of this belief is essentially what he illustrated throughout the book. To believe that, individually, you could drastically change the world is the opposite of humility. Inadvertently, Brooks is further emphasizing the need to have reasonable expectations for yourself, while still aiming to do good. However, the idea that leaders should resist going against the grain directly contradicts many beliefs that I have held to be self-evident. Perhaps extreme, Martin Luther King Jr. is widely regarded as a hero, but his

It is human nature for people to believe that they are the star of their own movie. For instance, when people debate one another, they often envision themselves as if they were a character in The West Wing whose arguments are so convincing that everybody in the room changes their mind and recognizes their own individual greatness. Unfortunately, we only have one perspective and can only see the world through our own eyes, so naturally it makes sense that we put ourselves at the center of the world. Realizing that everybody has this understanding of the world has been extremely liberating for me and has made me more reticent to criticize or chastise others, when I, myself, am equally as