"When something terrible happens to someone else, people often use the word unbearable. Living through a child's death, a spouse's, enduring some other kink of permanent loss--it's unbearable, it's too awful to be borne, and the person or people to whom it's happened take on a kind of horrible glow in your mind, because they are in fact bearing it, or trying to: doing the thing that it's impossible to do (Packer 1)."" This is an exert from chapter one of the book. As you can see, when the unthinkable happens, it is extremely tough for everyone involved. When a person looses the feeling in their legs and becomes a quadriplegic, it is thought to be an unbearable situation. Although the situation may seem unbearable, it is not. Handling a situation such as the paralysis of a loved one draws on ones character, and ultimately tells what kind of person you are. .
There are many different ways to deal with such a crisis. No matter what you choose to do, your decision shows who you are. This does not make you a bad or a good person, it simply shows your character. The issue of character comes up in two books; Character is Destiny by Russell Gough, and The Dive From Clausen's Pier by Ann Packer. Although both books do talk about character, they have completely different views. While decisions say a lot about your character, these books do not agree on what the decision says about your character.
In The Dive From Clausen's Pier, Carrie's mother talks with her daughter about leaving Mike. Carrie asked her mother in regards to leaving her fiancé, "What kind of person does it make me?- Her mother replies, "It makes you the kind of person you are."" Carrie's mother was basically saying that the decision she made, made the person she is. She implies that one bad decision or one really bad decision in this case, makes your personality. Now that she has made a bad decision in my mind, she is a bad person.
