Question: Dear Mr. McLemore, I recently graduated from high school, and I am thinking about my future. Do you have any advice to offer about success?

Answer: First, make sure that you have a good definition of success. Many think of success as fame, fortune, and fun. If one strives for character of the highest form, one is a success no matter what one possesses or achieves. The noblest character is Christlikeness, and that basically involves faith, devotion to God, purity, courage, and selfless service. Phillips Brooks once wrote, "Some day, in the years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now . . . Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process." I commend you for thinking of your future now, while you are young. You are following the sage advice of the one who wrote, "Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come . . ." (Ecclesiastes 12:1).