As I approach my 65th birthday, a milestone that can be generously described as the early stages of old age, I can’t help but reflect on all the unplanned turns my life has taken.

As a fourth grader, I was interviewed on the national TV show Kids Say the Darndest Things hosted by Art Linkletter. I said, "I want to be a lawyer because my mother says I talk so much I might as well get paid for it.”

My early ambition to become a wealthy lawyer was later replaced by the aspiration to become worthy lawyer. I wanted to be a fierce warrior for social justice.

Along the way, I was given an opportunity to teach law and I loved it. I derailed my trial law goals by happily spending my days learning, thinking, and writing about theoretical legal concepts and essential lawyering skills. I earned tenure (lifetime job security) before I was 30.

I specialized in "warrior" courses focusing on litigation and negotiation. My favorite saying was: "The law is what is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained."

As a sideline, I started a company to help students learn the law and pass the bar exam.

In 1976, the same year I became a father, I was assigned to teach legal ethics (this was the American Bar Association’s antidote to the Watergate scandal involving dozens of lawyers – after all, how would they know not to lie unless they had a course in law school?).

Together these experiences produced a new personal and professional life perspective. My fixation with teaching lawyers how to do what they could do was replaced by a desire to teach how to know what they should do. My new motto was, "There’s a big difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do."

About ten years later, I sold my business and left the groves of academe to found the nonprofit Joseph & Edna Josephson Institute of Ethics to honor my parents, the beginning of another journey full of unexpected turns.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.