How can I find out what my true character is?
By Rabbi Shalom Landau.
Rabbi Landau answers: “If you want to know what your character is, look how you behave when no one can stop you.” Behavior under pressure doesn't tell you much, because pressure is doing the work.
When a person is poor or weak, he explains, society and necessity act as a harness, forcing him to suppress his true nature. A genuinely bad person is forced to act civil; a genuinely selfish person is forced to cooperate. Take the harness off, and his true colors show.
That is why money is such a revealing test. It doesn't change anyone; it removes the harness. “Money is a mirror and amplifier.”
In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau puts the point sharply: the real test is not when you have no choice, but when you do. The question is not “What will I do if I have money?” but “Who am I right now, on the inside?”
Related concepts: Selfawareness · Truth
In A Soul at Peace: Wealth: A Mirror of the Inner Self
Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level
Surface claim
Your character shows in how you act when nothing can stop you.
Fear, vulnerability, or tension
Much good behavior may come from the harness of need and society, not from the person himself.
Deepest human truth
In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau asks whether bad traits are only held down by circumstance or have truly been turned around; only freedom shows the answer.
More questions from this teaching
More answers: Wisdom, Perception, and the Inner Life · All questions · Questions about Rabbi Landau and Rivnitz