Character

Oddly enough, I found the first small section of the reading for homework incredibly spiritual. It had some amazing points. It states that "none of us really knows other people. It's a thought everyone confronts and almost no one fully accepts." Can we ever fully know a person? I think the only one capable of truly knowing someone is Christ. He is the only one who can see why a person is they way they are; what shaped their character; what their inner workings and motives are.
Another part of the text says "We use our own experiences and our own feelings as a checkpoint against what we see in others." As soon as I read this statement I thought of checking myself against the character of Christ. In the grand scheme of life, He is the ultimate character in the story. His character is genuine.
Experiences build character. Everyone experiences, everyone has character. "Literary experience is experience; to put it another way, there is no need to distinguish literary experience from "life experience." This gave me a profound revelation on literature. So many times I look at a text and see text; I see a poem, I see a story, I see words, I see a search. I forget that it is an experience. I forget that there is a person behind this experience. A human being with a character, with a story, who wrote 'this' piece as an expression of experience; an expression of character. This just makes reading literature more enjoyable to me.
I also like pondering the thought of if the characters emerged from the story of did the story emerge from the characters? Developing the character is essential. For me, I especially enjoy stories and books where I can connect with the character. "We must want to know about a character." Even in pieces that do not have an evident character, the piece or poem itself has character. It comes down to me asking myself, what is the author trying to say through this character, and what are theses characters telling me about the character of the piece?
I learned quite a bit from this reading. :)