Contemplating my footprint in the world, I am reminded of the quote hiding in my brain about how it is not important what you leave for others; it is important what you leave in others. With that, I contemplate what is a worthwhile life.
ONLY one life to live!
We all want to do our best with it. We all want to make the most of it. How can we get hold of it? How can we accomplish the most with the energies and powers at our command?
What is worthwhile?
We all ask ourselves this question. Time slips away in further preparation, in the experiment, in useless or misdirected efforts. The world does not prove to be the same that it seemed to be in the bustling adolescent surroundings. Duties are not so clear as then, nor work so well-defined. Life is harder to handle than we thought. One finds that theories fail, and yet one has not had enough experience to know just where our path lies.
It is of a few simple things that “my own life has proved true” that I will reflect on.
Life is large. We cannot possibly grasp the whole of it in the few years that we have to live. What is vital? What is essential? What may we profitably let go? Let us ask ourselves these questions.
To begin with, what may we let go of? Who shall say? By what standard shall we measure? By what authority decide? Each of us must answer that question for ourselves. In looking for an answer, I find only one that satisfies me.
It is this:
We may let go of all things that we cannot carry into whatever comes next.
To me, this is a deep truth and a positive one. Surely it is not worthwhile for us to cumber our lives with the things which we can grasp at best for but a little time, when we may lay hold of things that shall be ours for ten thousand times ten thousand years.
We may drop the pretense.
Eternity is not good for shams. In its clear light, the false selves that we wear like a garment will shrivel and fall away. Whatever we really are, that let us be, in all fearlessness. Whatever we are not, that let us cease striving to seem to be. If we can rid ourselves of all the untruths of the word, manner, mode of life and thinking, we shall rid our lives of much rubbish, restlessness, and fear.
Let us hide nothing, and we shall not be afraid of being found out. Let us put on nothing, and we shall never cringe. Let us assume nothing, and we shall not be mortified. Let us do and say nothing untrue and we need not fear to have that the deepest springs of our lives sought out, nor our most secret motive analyzed. Nothing gives such upright dignity of self as the consciousness.
“I am what I pretend to be. About me, there is no make-believe.”
We may drop worry.
The eternal life is serene. It is not careworn, nor knows it any foreboding of future ill. Can’t we take its large spirit of serenity and cheer? For only the serene soul is strong. Every moment of worry weakens the soul for its daily combat.
Worry is an infirmity. There is no virtue in it. Worry is spiritual near-sightedness–a fumbling way of looking at little things, and of magnifying their value. True spiritual vision sweeps the universe and sees things in their right proportion. The finest landscape of Ansel Adams viewed out of focus, would appear distorted and untrue. Let us hang a life on the line, as artists say, and look at it honestly.
Seen in their true relations, there is no experience of life over which one has a right to worry. Ruskin says, “God/Universe/Source gives us always strength enough, and sense enough for everything he wants us to do.” Sense enough: this thought comforts me. It is not the lack of ability that often worries us. It is the lack of a little savoir-faire. It is not our failures that distress us as much as our idiocies.
We may let go of discontent.
In all the eternal years there is no word of murmur from any restless heart. In its vast silences how trivial the complaining of our harassed days would sound!
In life, I find two things that make for discontent. One is a lack of harmony with one’s environment. The other is dissatisfaction with one’s present opportunities. Of these, the first may be overcome. The second may be put out of one’s life.
A congenial environment is not one of the essentials of life. Present opportunities, if rightly used, are as great as the soul needs to ask. Which of us can sit down at the close of a day and say, “Today, I have done all that was in my power to do for humanity?”
Ah, no! We look for large things, and forget that which is close at hand! To make life “as God/Universe/Source gives, not as we want it,” and then make the best of it, is the hard lesson that life puts before the human soul to learn.
One’s environment may be very disagreeable. It may bring constant hurts of heart, mortification, tears, angry rebellion, and wounded pride. But there is a reason for that environment. To become strong, the soul needs to fight something. Overcome something. It cannot gain muscle on a bed of eider-down. A great part of the strength of life consists in the degree to which we get into harmony with our appointed environment. So long as we are at war with our town, our relatives, our family, our station, and our surroundings, so long will much of the force of our lives be spent uselessly, aimlessly. A good way to get into harmony with one’s environment is to try to understand it first, and then to begin to adapt ourselves to it, so far as may be possible. We can never work well while there is friction in our lives, nor gain in our work that “beauty which is born of power and the sympathy which is born of love” of which Ruskin speaks.
Let us say, God/Universe/Source put me among these scenes, these people, these opportunities, these duties. He/She is neither absent-minded nor incompetent. This is exactly the place He/She means me to be in, the place I am capable of filling. There is no mistake. My life is in its proper setting.
But with this thought in mind, we need not sit down in idleness. There are things in the circumstances of our lives that we can change. There are opportunities that our own efforts may enlarge. We can conquer many of the difficulties that beset our career, and, so conquering, be strong! I believe more and more that there is no impediment that cannot be overcome. No hindrance to usefulness that cannot be removed. If we go through life timidly, weakly, ineffectively, the fault is neither with our endowment nor our environment. It is with us. It is we that are not competent for life. We that are lazy, cowardly, idle. When one sets himself to live a grand life, man can not interrupt him, God/Universe will not!
As for our opportunities, we can make a heroic life out of whatever is set before us to work with or upon. A story is told of a poor artist who was regally entertained in a castle. He had nothing with which to repay his friends. But he shut himself up in his room for some days before he left them, locking the door, and refusing to come out or to let anyone in. When he went away the servant found the sheets of his bed missing, and thought that he must have stolen them. But in searching further they were found in one corner of the room, and when unrolled was discovered to have a glorious picture of Alexander in the tent of Darius painted upon them.
If an artist can paint a great picture on a bedsheet, can we not find opportunity and material in our present environment for the thing we wish to do?
We may let go of self-seeking.
In eternal life, there is no greed. One hears of neither “mine” nor “yours.” All things are for all. As the waters fled away from Tantalus, so do the good things of life flee from the grasping and selfish spirit. The richest experiences of life never come to those who try to win them selfishly. If they do gain their desires, they find them as ashes to the taste. But all blessings are in the way of him who, forgetful of self, tries to be helpful to the world, and who spends his life in loving deeds.
Pretense, worry, discontent, and self-seeking–these are the things that we may let go of.
To Be Continued…
Next time, we will see what to keep…
Interlude
Be A Mr. Jensen – Clint Pulver