The Force of Character

How to grow older, and how to grow up

I first read The Force of Character about ten years ago, in my mid-late forties. It’s about being older, and what that means. How much I valued it is proven in the number of highlights I made. There’s a lot. On the second read I’m undertaking now I’m adding even more, tons more, in fact: there are chapters where half the text now has a pale yellow stroke across it. A sign, perhaps, that this is an even better time in my life to be reading it — non-ancient though I still (usually) feel (on some days).

As a sidebar, if you make a lot of highlights in digital books, check out Readwise. It’s a cool service that’ll keep them all together, and also serve up random selections every day, including via an app, which is a great way of being reminded of passages you’ve enjoyed which might otherwise be forgotten. It’s also the way I generated the quote graphics for this piece.

I was led to the book by my Wise Friend Adam™. Can’t remember why he suggested it. He does that sometimes, and I’ve never regretted following his advice (on books, anyway: he once gave me terrible advice regarding how good an idea it was to sit on a balcony in a motel in Santa Monica with him one summer evening and keep drinking Chivas Regal for hours). It functioned as my entry into a broader world of neo-Jungian thought, albeit via an haphazard route, because I’m an idiot.

I read The Force of Character, loved it. Bought another Hillman eBook from Amazon, also loved that one. Bought another. Was hugely taken by that too, while noting a slight change in prose style, not for the worse, perhaps making it even more accessible. Bought the next that I spotted online... only halfway through that volume realizing that somehow I’d accidentally slipped sideways into downloading and happily reading someone called James HOLLIS, instead of James HILLMAN.

Hollis is another neo-Jungian, hence the confusion. I’ve now probably read more Hollis than I have Hillman: but both are wonderfully insightful, with Hollis perhaps the more openly readable, Hillman the more academic (albeit with beautifully clear prose). If you want to dip your toe into depth psychology and the inner workings of the soul (as broadly defined) then these two are the way to go.

This particular book is about the process of becoming not-young, and considering what strange bounty comes with that change, and how both we and society can and should regard later stages of life positively and with respect — rejecting modish ideas of diminution, and unshackling the idea of age from the purely physiological.

But you don’t have to be old, or getting older, to enjoy or learn from it. It’s also a gateway to understanding your elders better while they’re still around. I’ll be forever grateful for the fact that after reading The Force of Character the first time, I instantly became far more tolerant of my father’s tendency to repeat certain stories time and again.

Instead of wondering if he’d forgotten that he’d told me before, I realized he was likely well-aware that he was repeating himself, and liked telling the story again, and the process was one of him ambling around his past like a beloved garden, walking the boundaries of his existence as if checking the fencing was still sound. I’d kinda understood this before, but not with such certainty and depth.

I even came to relish re-hearing the stories, accompanying Dad once again on this or that stroll, like wandering to the pub together along a well-known path. That insight alone made this a special book for me, but on second reading it’s also helping me understand a lot of things about myself, my evolving understanding of the world, and my potential place within it. It’s a brilliant, thoughtful, and very readable piece of work for people of any age.

Very highly recommended.