INTRODUCTION
AS LONG as we live, the
future is coming to
pass. There it is, a promise or a specter. To one man it brings joy and
the
realization of his dreams–to another, tragedy.
All your life you have seen
such futures happening. Years ago,
some intimate of yours gave evidence of
splendid possibilities. Now he is a broken man, sick and discredited.
An
acquaintance you believed had little promise is wealthy and revered.
How did it
happen?
No question is more important
than this, none upon which you and I
need more light. Here we
are, working at our
tasks, trying to save a
little money, giving what love we have to our intimates, and hoping,
always hoping,
for a better tomorrow.
But suppose we are working,
saving, struggling to no avail? We
need to do something about tomorrow NOW. What if we discover, years from now, that ignorance of certain laws and
the neglect of
important methods compromised our efforts and left us disappointed?
That is our fear.
You can’t build the future in
the future. You can only plan for it
by constructive programs and positive actions today. There is now
something for
you to take, and something for you to give. Your giving may be only a
courteous
attention to another man’s ideas, but that is something–in fact, much.
When
this act of giving and taking is wisely repeated you learn not only
that you
can produce a constantly unfolding life, but how–which is to some
point.
We must be ready to meet the
ever changing scene. Surely this has
always been true. Does not the art of planning one’s future begin with
alert
interest in how to overcome the obstacles of today? Tomorrow is new.
New ways
are necessary in the now if we are to be ready for the time to come.
Suppose, instead of living in
this century, you were a primitive
man trying to lift a massive stone, tearing your bleeding fingers.
Suppose someone
came along with a crowbar, crying “Here, I’ve a lever, I’ll pry the
rock out
for you.” What would you do: go on tugging, or stand back and let him
use his
bar?
If you saw him accomplish the
task with ease would you let the man
go away, leaving you to struggle with other rocks, or would you ask him
how
such levers work? Suppose that then, after you had learned all about
this
easier way of moving rocks, you dis-covered this stranger used other
methods
new to you. He could move things around on what he called “wheels.” He
knew how
to harness a waterfall and make it work for you. He could hollow out a
log so
that, in it, you could travel with ease on the water. Wouldn’t you
become a
little excited and want to find out more of what he knew?
I have been excited a good many
years now over what seems to me a
most amazing fact. The discovery of how to control matter, to make
physical
life easier, came to mankind slowly. Insight into how a like
transformation may
take place in a man’s handling of his own life has come in one
generation. Most
people are not yet aware of it. Few realize what has been happening,
for
millions are toiling greedily and fighting bitterly everywhere.
They know that
science and mechanics have made over the face of the earth. They do not
know
that psychology and its sister sciences are making a like change for
man’s
handling of his own nature.
Yet, in spite of this fact I
hate “success books.” I sympathize
with those critics who open such a volume with the feeling that
“here is
another attempt to mind my business.” There is nothing wrong in the
desire to
help others. I do not dislike the idea of someone showing me better
ways of living.
But I refuse to be constantly admonished.
If a man has spent years in
chemistry or astronomy we do not feel
that our independence is interfered with if he reports on his
experience in research.
When an explorer, returned from the Peruvian jungle, describes his
adventures,
no one protests, not even though one may conceivably have been there
too. What
people object to, I believe, is the idea that they are unable to think
out
their own problems. And yet, this is a very different civilization from
that of
our forefathers. Changes have come with great rapidity. Education in
the art of
living has not kept pace with environmental transitions.
It is hard to reach people’s
minds in a world of such hurry, worry
and strain, a fact which may explain from another angle the “style” of
even the
most sincere of the “self-help” books. How often do people
separate serious
effort–that done in the spirit of modern science–from the jim-crack
attempts to
teach you how to trick fortune? I don’t know. I am frankly puzzled
about this
question of trying, through the written word, to help people. Should
the aim be
to reach every one or to write for the chosen few? Between the Scylla
of
culture and the Charybdis of practicality, the channel is narrow indeed. Form and language
must touch primary responses in the
reader’s mind; otherwise, if he reads at all, he merely admires,
commends, and
returns to his old harmful habits because the electric switch of
emotional
purpose has not been touched.
Recently, much to my confusion,
a top-notcher in advertising
advised me to use the very admonitions I hate. We were finishing dinner
when he
demanded, “Do you know what century you are living in?”
“I always thought I did,” I
answered.
“Do you think in the same
century you live in?” he pursued.
“Think in it?”
“Yes, think in its terms, do
things in a way consistent with its
experiences. Lots of advice given people these days is put in the same
form
which Marcus Aurelius used for Roman minds when chariots clattered down
the
streets and books were scrawled on papyrus. Now, you’re not living
in that age. Airplanes, radio, newspapers, a million
influences have speeded things up.
We men in advertising
have learned that if we want to communicate with people we must do so
in a way
consistent with the life they lead. Look here, you speak about
designing one’s
own future. That’s a matter of having good plans, isn’t it, and getting
yourself to see what to do?”
“Why, certainly,” I agreed.
“Well, if you want people to
listen, mustn’t you try for the same,
rapid-fire effect we use in selling a new car? ‘Synchronized gear
shift–just
feel her glide–you stop at the touch of the velvet brake.’ They hear us
warning
them about vitamins A, B, C, D. People plan their personal life in tune
with
these everyday impressions, so I don’t agree with your fear of
practical
phrases. I’d like you to get some new slogans for us all to live by.
They
should be just as impelling as those emblazoned by the commercial
world. We
sell toothpaste by pointing a finger, shouting Four Out Of Five,
picturing an
open mouth with bleeding gums. You fellows must cry: ‘Put Your Life in
Order Or
You’ll Go Insane–breakdowns are packing our asylums. Stop Rushing–heart
failure
is waiting for you. Psychic Germs Crawl Everywhere–learn to protect
yourself
against emotional infections. Mental Malnutrition Is Starving Men’s
Minds. Millions
Fail From Psychic Anemia. Don’t Accept a Diet of Old Ideas and Musty
Morals.
Demand Fresh Food for Your Thought. You writers of psychology can’t
succeed by
retaining the literary flavor of the Dark Ages. If you buggy-ride your
way into
tomorrow the world will pass you in its new V-8.”
“I don’t want to be
sensational,” I objected, shaking my head. “I
don’t like the way you fellows are hounding people to buy this,
that, and the
other worthless object.”
“No, you don’t like it, but the
same people you want to help are
being screamed at by our advertisements. You can’t get a whisper
across in a
mad uproar. You have valuable information that shows how men could
live more
happily. But they don’t know, it; they can’t hear your stuff because
you refuse
to make a loud enough noise.”
<>
“So,” I said
irritably, “you want me to shout:
DARE TO BE YOURSELF
DON’T PERMIT COMPROMISE
USE STRATEGY TO PROTECT YOUR
LIFE
DESIGN YOUR OWN FUTURE
BUILD ONLY ON YOUR OWN PLANS
DON’T BECOME A PSYCHIC SLAVE
IMAGINATION IS MAGIC WHEN YOU
ARE ITS MASTER
VISUALIZE TOMORROW, THEN ACT TO
MAKE THE PICTURE LIVE
MAKE YOUR DESTINY OR IT UNMAKES
YOU
“Are these the sort of slogans you want?” I added, out of breath.
“Well, why not? Aren’t they
true?”
“You bet they are.”
“Don’t they stick in your mind,
this way? In one of your books you
gave a description of directing and empowering the will which should
transform
any man’s life. You put it all in quiet, dignified words, stated
calmly, at
some length. One person in a hundred thousand would read that
dissertation. Now
suppose you’d said, instead:
‘‘‘Will is powerless without
action patterns. Make clear designs
of what you want to do. Make pictures in your brain for your future
conduct to
follow. Repeat the same picture until it sticks. Habit is master or
slave. Make
a practice of mental imagery. Your brain is your theater. Make movies
of
tomorrow on your screen of thought.’
“Now, I’ll wager that a hundred
persons to every one who got your
ideas before would get them put in this new way.”
“Yes,” I shot back, “and every
lover of literature from here to
Hooeyton would jump on me and bemoan the passing of a reticent
style.”
“Maybe, maybe,” he admitted,
“but which is better: for reticence
to pass or people to go mad and commit suicide because they don’t know
the
truths which you and other psychologists could tell them? Your job, as
I see
it, is to get your ideas over and take the consequences. If you’re
criticized,
well . . .”
However wise this advice may
be–to put what one has to say in the
spirit and tone of this century–the essential truths of how to plan
your own
future were nearly as well known two thousand years ago as they are
today.
Truth is never new. Even airplanes fly in obedience to ancient
principles.
I would like to emphasize also
that there is no magic by which
tomorrow is made into certain joy. I have no platitudes of plenty or promises of ecstatic poise. I can sing you no lullabies
while the drums beat and the
riot grows. I
can only help you to direct yourself into some semblance of
fortitude, some
habits of sanity, some conservation of strength, some return to reason;
that
you may play your best part in the present turmoil and win whatever
place is
constructive and forward-looking in the great tomorrow.
For sometimes, when I see the
appalling misery around me, the failure,
sickness and suicide, I feel, indeed, like shouting down all the
streets, “It
doesn’t need to be. There is a way. Your life can be set free.
Happiness, achievement,
a better future is possible.” Of course, cynics would only think, “He’s
hipped
on psychology.”
But isn’t it tragic that
millions suffer on, battered about by
fate, when if they only knew and would believe it, a miracle could come
to pass
in their own lives? Isn’t it tragic, too, that if you have enthusiasm
for the
new discoveries and an ardent desire to help put them across many
people will
think you foolishly extreme?
If, fifty years ago, anyone had
said that man would soon travel
from Los Angeles to New York in the brief time of the last
transcontinental
flight, he would have been called foolishly extravagant. Would you have
listened, at the turn of the century, to prophecies of the radio?
Call me a visionary if you
will, I still insist that nowadays
knowledge of how to plan your own future can free your life of hardship
just as
remarkably as mechanics has liberated your physical experience. We do
not, by
any means, understand the whole art of fashioning a human life, but we
know
enough to turn discouragement into confidence, grief into happiness,
failure
into success–and that’s a start, you’ll admit.
CHAPTER
1
The
Secret of Good Fortune
YOU can
have what you want if you know how to get it. A simple statement, you
tell me,–too
obvious to discuss. And yet, belief in it has changed the face of life
and
shaped the destiny of nations. Those peoples who thought that what they
had was
all they could ever have stayed for centuries in a primitive state.
Those who
were convinced that they could make life easier and happier transformed
their
surroundings as the effort to find a way produced results.
This belief–that you can have
what you want if you know how to get
it–is the single most important attitude either a nation or an
individual can
have.
As long as the Australian
aborigines believed that caves and
camp-fires were all the comfort a man could have, they made no effort
to secure
better conditions. Had humanity continued to believe that lightning was
the
fireworks of God and electricity useless, dynamos would never have been
made.
Without belief there is no effort. We remain handicapped just as
long as we
think our obstacles inevitable. We do almost nothing to bring about a
better
tomorrow if we think the attempt is futile anyhow. If we accept the
limitations
that now trouble us, we shall learn little about how the improvements
of life
are brought to pass.
Shall we, like savages, leave
our minds alone, do nothing to
sharpen our wits toward the more efficient handling of experience? The
dolt
does nothing to develop himself. The bushman still makes fire by
rubbing
sticks; you turn the switch of your electric stove. It will be his fate
to rub
sticks all his days if he never looks beyond that way of fire-making.
It will
be your fate to have the same old troubles–anxiety over money,
arguments with
your wife, worries concerning your children, disappointment in
your position–unless
you learn how to change your fate.
It isn’t mere good luck to have
a telephone at hand to call the
doctor or arrange for a game of golf. One Alexander Bell did something,
years
ago, to facilitate the problem of communication. It isn’t fortune that
brought
an amusing radio program into your home. One Guglielmo Marconi had a
hand in
giving you that pleasure. Nor was it chance that the Magna Carta was
signed,
our Constitution drawn, or your daughter saved from dying for want of
sunlight
on her body. Her little tanned back is a privilege that was denied the
girls of
two centuries ago. Men have fought for her freedom, her health, her
happier
fate. Belief led them to strive for human betterment. Had they let the
ignorance and prejudice of our forefathers remain, your offspring
might still “go
into a decline.”
Nor is this contrast between
servitude and conquest found only in
the physical aspects of life. You aren’t afraid of witchcraft. You
don’t, if
your baby dies unbaptized, think of her in an eternal hell because you
couldn’t
get to church with her before the end. You don’t whip your adolescent
daughter
when she’s interested in boys, or revile her for sexual capacity. The
efforts
of many consecrated men and women have won for her a new fate,
a better destiny
than came to Abigail Plymouth, her bonneted forebear.
If you believe there is a way
to get what you want by learning how
to secure it, you will organize your efforts to that end, seeking for a
more
intelligent command over things, events, and yourself. Only the moron
who lets
his mind alone, wallowing in the ignorance of his ancestors, needs to
remain a
victim of their limitations. The line between manhood and supine
stupidity lies
here.
Let us look at five men in an
identical situation. One lives in a
mountain cabin, and about him feuds have raged for years. His religion, morals, outlook on
life, are all
narrow, literal and primitive. Another grew to manhood in the slums.
His father
was a gangster, his mother a woman of the streets. He has their
attitudes and
ideals. A third is the son
of an
arrogant, austere conservative, a descendant of the witch-baiters of
old, proud
and sardonic. His ideas were set a century ago. A fourth is a
happy-go-lucky
fellow whose father was a poet of sorts, and something of an
artist. He has wandered
to the four winds and thinks of life as a joke. The fifth man had just
as poor
a start. He was an immigrant with little background and no education.
His name
was Joseph Pulitzer. He rose to become a great editor and a
constructive
influence in American culture.
But how? He believed that
gaining a better future was, first of
all, a matter of knowing how to gain it. Understanding of the way to
live, what
to take from his environment and what to give to the people and the
tasks in
his experience seemed to him far more important than having money,
brains, or
the advantages of high position.
He held the same attitude
toward life that characterizes a great
scientist or a successful engineer. He treated the problem of winning a
brighter future than was his at birth as a matter for thoughtful,
organized
effort.
Failure came to the mountaineer
because his superstitions denied
him mental freedom. His attitude was a cramped acceptance of fate.
Failure came
to the slum boy because he believed life was what society had made it
appear.
His attitude was one of trying to cheat his way ahead. The son of the
aristocrat became so frozen an intellectual he could not also become a
man. His
attitude made him stand aloof from good fortune. He thought it his by
right and
would make no move to earn happiness. The poet’s son enjoyed his
indolence and,
like many another vagabond, drifted to nowhere in particular.
Among the five, only Joseph
Pulitzer won a better tomorrow. Note,
however, that nothing physical marked the contrasts of these men.
Brains played
some part. But suppose all five had been adopted as infants by, let us
say,
Lincoln’s mother, and had grown up in her cabin, under her influence.
Would the
difference in brains, money, position, then have been as significant?
Were not
their attitudes toward life the true cause of success or failure in
these five
men?
Statistics show that, in most
cases, it isn’t fate that blocks a
man’s progress. It isn’t even himself. It is the attitudes he has taken
on.
These are no more the man than the clothes he wears; but, as if in
shoes so
tight he cannot walk, his progress is delayed by ways of doing that
bind, pinch
and constrict his power.
You may have become
dissatisfied and blame destiny because fortune
has seemed to pass you by. But probably you haven’t stopped to see
why good-luck
runs the other way when you approach. Possibly it makes you angry when
someone
suggests that your troubles cannot all be blamed on the unwillingness
of other
people to help you out. You may hate
books which discuss methods of
success and you may contest ideas loosely called psychological. If you
fail,
well–you cry–it’s your own privilege, and no one needs to point out
what you
could have done or how you could have done it, that would have led to a
happier
conclusion.
At one time or another many of
us have risen in righteous wrath to
point out what strenuous efforts we were making. Literally we were
straining to
the last nerve for that future dreamed of in the past. But there are
other
things besides laziness that destroy a man’s achievement. Certainly we
were not
lazy. Concerning the part a man plays in determining his own
future, an
advocate of the newer ideas is not necessarily pointing a finger
at anyone’s
personal failings. Quite the contrary. We who spend our days
presenting the
facts of the human sciences are sure that faults of character are not
as much
the cause of people’s difficulties as they themselves suppose. They
contest
our ideas, expecting condemnation from them. Yet thousands of cynics
who
believe the psychology of achievement is only sentimental tush,
themselves
indulge in tirades about our moral delinquencies, denouncing human
nature in
words that would make our Puritan forefathers seem brothers to Freud
himself.
From the cynic’s point of view,
our ancestors did not breed a
people greatly superior to the apes. The cynics delight to elevate dogs
above
their immediate associates and sometimes defend cats as superior to the
women
in their lives. To the cynic, the future of no one is worth worrying
about
since he doesn’t deserve as good a fate as the worst he is likely to
get.
All such discussions, common as
they are in club and office, are quite beside the point. The modern psychologist is neither giving civilization
a sheepskin of praise, nor
denying that we may sometimes become pessimistic as to the intelligence
and
character-worth of our fellow men. Few settings are what they ought to
be;
fewer people angelic, or in the genius class. For all that, most of us
should
not trace our thwarted ambitions to either of these limitations. Men
can, and
do, win good futures for themselves with no more brains, as little
virtue, and
as great circumstantial obstacles as any of us have possessed.
But how? That is what we rush
to ask. Why do some individuals push
ahead to splendid accomplishments while others, no less gifted, remain in the same drab circumstances where they began the struggle?
The answer lies in the frames of
mind the achievers brought to their relation between the self and its
setting.
A point of view is neither part of a man’s character nor an objective
factor in
his situation. It is something between himself and his circumstances,
quite as
an overcoat is neither part of his body nor yet part of the wind that,
but for
it, might give him goose-flesh and the sniffles. His clothes are on his
body.
His attitudes are on his mind. Good clothes and good attitudes are
essential to
health and to accomplishment.
When custom put the feet of
Chinese girls in such thongs that they
could hardly toddle, when the style of the Victorian era bound a
woman’s waist
to such wasplike dimensions that she could only sit around the house
like a
potted lily and feared pregnancy like a plague, you couldn’t exactly
admire
what the fashions were doing to her body. Pale maidens of the past
who swooned
and languished and became wrinkled old women at forty were quite of the
same
blood as our sports-loving, tanned young matrons of today, with their
free
swinging arms and legs. Yes, even of the same biological strains as the
radiant
charmers of sixty-odd years who sprinkle powder and rouge about the
landscape.
The change comes from a new
attitude about clothing which permits
natural, suitable dress and normal ways of living. For indeed
attitudes, good
or bad, precede all the progress or failure humanity makes. We do not
create
our destiny, but our achievement within that destiny is determined by
the attitudes
with which we meet it. Fate may stand like a specter in some lives and
smile
like an angel in others, but it is far more likely to smile when we are
in a
constructive frame of mind.
Not five per cent of humanity understands the word “practical.” They believe that
a frenzied
concern with things, about pennies and purchases, is essential to
practicality.
A man’s attitudes they ignore, yet advocate such a burdening of his
mind with
the thousand details of an average setting that his mental
storehouse looks like a New England attic. Concern with attitudes is
subjective, they scoff, akin to
mystical
theories. So they go on breaking down from overwork and wondering why
their
vaunted practicality brings such meager results. At this point, if
caught up,
they must find an explanation. Therefore failings of character, or
faults of
fortune seem logical causes. Yet even splendid abilities and the finest
of
opportunities would have been compromised by the attitudes brought to
the
situation.
When people believed that
bathing was unholy, was it fate or
foolishness that favored their diseases? When Athenian matrons lived so
as
never to see the sun, or Oriental “untouchables” felt themselves doomed
to
donkey driving, what blocked their future–nature or nonsense? If the
chromosomes of a low-caste man in India had endowed him with the genius
of an
Aristotle, would he ever have been able to realize his future as long
as the
attitude of an outcast condemned him to the level of toil and
degradation? If,
as an infant, he had come to believe his lot fixed and absolute, it
would have
been fixed and absolute, but not otherwise. There might have been
social resistances
to his advancement if he had stayed in his birth setting and struggled
there to
elevate himself, but nothing in natural destiny denied him his future.
The
attitudes which bound his mind would alone be the cause of his
imprisonment.
Nor are your limitations any
less easily traced to whatever frames
of mind you, as deluded by your parents and the customs in which they
ignorantly
trained you, have come to accept as inevitable. What made them right or
holy?
We give to our constricting attitudes an awful reverence. Not
otherwise can we
bear them. Not otherwise could our moral mentors have been sure to bind
our
brains successfully. We were taught to believe our chains essential to
our
virtue. Hence we fear freedom and contend the cutting of thongs as
fervently as
those first Chinese girls who shuddered to think of the consequences of
having
normal feet.
Consider the temerity of a
taboo-worshiping savage who dares to
cross the tribal line, to trespass over which is forbidden by the will
of his
god. Think how impotent his own human will when it has surrendered its
vigor in
the worship of a constricting belief. Think of the fearful toll that
attitudes
have taken, since time was, from the natural energy and power of a
man’s
volition. And in contrast think of the pent-up possibilities for a
future that
will fulfill our ambitions and satisfy our dreams, once we accept the
importance
of discarding such fetters. Ridigity of thought means torpor of the
will.
The art of living consists in
knowing what to take and what to
give; how to gain and how to use creative powers. Fear of one’s
right to life,
taboos against it, foolish beliefs that enslave us in obligations make failure inevitable. You cannot exercise your judgment
as to what is
right for you to take nor yet know what is your duty or your joy to
give if
constricting prejudices stand in the way. A boy whose mother holds him
in
filial bondage is not free to live, grow or succeed after his own
nature. Life
is denied him save as it is filtered through the pattern of her biases.
Satisfaction, then,
fulfillment, depends on your belief in freedom,
for not otherwise can you secure what is yours in the come and go of
experience.
Every moment of your life is full of opportunity to give and to
receive. Many
influences play upon you. Many demands are made upon you and there are
countless things in any setting you do not want or need to take.
Failure,
breakdown, madness results from too frenzied an attempt to give what
you have
not, do what you cannot, depriving yourself at the same time of what
you need
and should take, while often striving after what is worthless and
should be
neglected.
The art of giving and taking,
then, is indeed the secret of intelligent
living, a veritable key to happiness. Consider with me any
ordinary life–that,
for example, of Edwin Brewer. You aren’t acquainted with him but you
know ten
other men so like him that I might be describing any one of them. Edwin
was not
a success, he was not a failure. He got along with the other men in his
office.
His salary was not large, nor too small for his family to live on with
comfort
in Stogville Heights. At times there was some worry over money, when
the doctor’s
bills ran up, for a year or so. Edwin didn’t hate his work, but then,
he didn’t
like it. He’d have preferred gold mining in Alaska–at least he thought
he
would, knowing little of the hardship involved.
Edwin took out on his family
the frustration he felt in his career.
You soon learned that he was the head of the household, and Mrs. Brewer
kept up
the illusion, even when they were alone. It was more comfortable
that way. His
male arrogance didn’t bother her except when he came down too hard on
Junior,
or interfered with running the house. There was not much romance
between them,
but no undue friction either.
Could you have penetrated the
masquerade in which Edwin lived,
seen below his pretense of power into the confused despair of the man,
how
great the contrast between his outward manner and his actual emotion!
Embarrassed,
nervous, he felt inadequate for every aspect of his life. Confidence
was only a
compensation for doubt, doubt of himself, of everything. He clung
to his work,
his marriage and his home, empty as they were, because–well–there was
nothing
else to do. He had never known how to live or how to make life any
better than
chance let it become.
Every life has its privileges
and its obligations. Reduced to
simple terms, there are things that belong to us, that we have a
right to
take, and duties we must fulfill, things we must give. He who from
childhood
knows how to upbuild his life with whatever develops and enriches
it, insures
his future as certainly as it is possible for one to do. He who has
learned
what is rightly to be expected of him establishes his human
relations
harmoniously.
Edwin, in his nervous way,
often took from others what he had no
right to possess: privacy from his wife, freedom from his children. His
ego in
its uncertainty broke into their play, their conversation, oppressed
their
purposes and destroyed their poise. Nor did he give them the
love they needed, the sustainment or protection. They knew him only
as a provider of food, clothing and shelter, a doer of routine deeds.
He could have pointed to scores
of obligations discharged, to
money earned and bills paid. “See,” he could have said, “I do what is
expected
of me.” And in his work the same drab picture appeared. He performed
his work
patiently, faithfully, continually–and that was all. He gave it dutiful
attention
but none
of the
creative interest the task required. Nor was there any likelihood that
things
could change, for Edwin did not know much of giving and taking, in
work, in
love, or in life.
Failure starts in infancy when
no one teaches us how to gain what
is necessary to health, vigor and purpose. Failure comes when we are
ignorant
of what to do and how to give ourselves with wisdom and fervor. Nor is
this a
principle of human life only. Every plant that achieves maturity brings
each
day of its future to pass by taking the moisture, sunlight, nitrogen
and humus
it needs. It must reach for them or die. It gives us nothing if it has
taken
nothing. It gives, too, according to its kind, from blades of grass to
perfumed
blossoms and ripened fruits. The art of taking and giving according to
its
nature is the secret of its life. It is no less so with yours.
In every situation there are
things, valuables, loves, knowledges,
powers that you can take. In each event and all environment there are
things,
sympathies, attentions, thoughts you can give. Only as both these
aspects of
your relation to experience are developed can you attain a successful
future,
or even protect the present. For some part of every setting you are in
belongs
to you. Something from you is demanded quite as essentially. If you do
not
learn to discover what is yours in your contacts with experience, your
will
weakens, your mind starves, your body sickens, your spirit wanes. Your
future
becomes inauspicious and unhappy.
Likewise, if you do not learn
what to give of yourself and from
within yourself, of love and wisdom, of service and stimulus, for
coöperation
and security, your friends withdraw, your intimates languish, your life
loses
its security and your future becomes an empty husk.
The secret, then, isn’t only a
matter of knowing what to
take and what to give, but how to take and how to give, on the basis of
your
own endowments. You’ve been taught to give what was demanded of you, to
take
what your class, sex, or situation permitted. That way lies ruin.
For
centuries women were given meager privileges. They died under abject
privations.
Then they rebelled, organized a “woman’s movement” and took their place
in life
as human beings. There had been no future for them so long as they
believed
their place was in the home as the sexual plaything of man. There is no
future
for you so long as you accept your particular bondage.
In fact, until you reject the
many false standards by which you
were reared, and write a new Magna Carta of personal liberty, there is
no
future for you worth bothering about. Take what nature offers you, what
nature
says you need, whether human ignorance and petty platitudes agree or
not. Give
only what is natural for you to give, and do only what is true and
healthful
for your organism, no matter what decadent dogmas stand in the
way. Discard,
now and forever, those artificial and inane ideas that compromise
your future,
else nobody can keep you from following other failures, suicides,
paralytics
and the insane. You may not come to their end, but the one you get
won’t be
pleasant.
Realize that in every situation
there are things you can take
without injuring anyone’s natural and true privilege of life. First on
the list
is your personal freedom. Second, the right to your own ideas.
Third, the
privilege of being yourself, of doing no duty whatsoever that is
contrary to
the normal expression of that self. And if, along with this, you take
all the
joy you can get out of comradeship, sunshine, food, a swim, or a dance,
or the
million other delights that free men know, then you’ll not be so badly
off–while able to become a great giver of joy and goodness to all who
come near
you.
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