“I am so energized by the beauty of someone like Madison’s mind.”
That text came from one of our sons. He’s reading The Federalist Papers in school, specifically Federalist #10, by James Madison, and he’s fallen in intellectual love. Ken and I are getting torrents of texts like this, exclaiming over his reading.
But it was the quote that I shared with you above that really got me: the one where he expresses his appreciation for the beauty and excellence of the mind of a man he’ll never meet.
I felt proud of him because he was exhibiting a character strength that our society doesn’t celebrate much. We’re encouraged to do, create, and achieve things ourselves; appreciating the talents of others feels like a nice thing to do - but not exactly a strength. Yet positive psychologists believe that this is in fact a very important character trait. They call it the “Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence.”
Would you like to know what YOUR top three character strengths are, and how best to use them?