Destiny
Never say that you wish your situation were different! Never wish you had some other person"s life or troubles or worries.
Accept your own as a _working basis_, the best for you.
Then go ahead and _change whatever_ displeases you.
Remember you are the maker and moulder of your own destiny. You do not recall the fact, but you brought about the present conditions of your destiny in former incarnations.
Even if you do not believe this, you must acknowledge that _you are here_, and that the situation in which you find yourself seems to be inevitable for the present.
But it is not inevitable for the future, unless you lie down in the furrow and whine, and wish you were a millionaire, or a genius, and rail at the partiality of Providence.
There is no partiality in the Universe.
The whole scheme is well balanced. If you were allowed to change lots with anyone on the face of the earth, you would complain and find fault in a short time.
One of our best known millionaires, born to opulence, complains that he has been robbed of the privilege of making his own fortune.
He is no happier than you. His confession betrays his weakness of character just as your repining and fault-finding betrays yours.
The real worth-while character thanks G.o.d for its destiny and says, "I will show the world what I can do with my life."
Not long ago there was a great trotting-race at Brighton Beach. The blind conqueror "Rythmic" won five consecutive races.
Think of it! He did not, like a mortal man, shrink back and say "I am blind--that is a terrible destiny--I am cursed of G.o.d--I will not try to win the race." He just trusted the hand of the _Master at the reins_, did his best, and won the honors of the season.
We are all blind racers on the track of earth. The king, the millionaire, the statesman, the lawmaker, the beggar, the laborer, the cripple, we are all in the dark. The only thing is to trust the hand of the Master, and _do our best_.
Believe your position is the right starting point for _you_, merely the starting point.
It is the shapeless block of stone from which you are to fashion the perfect statue.
Or it is the mere mud from which you are to mould the clay image, and later that is to be put into enduring marble.
What is uglier or more unattractive than mud?
Yet think of the glorious conceptions which it imprisons.
Take the mud of your present environment and thank G.o.d for it, and make the image of the future you desire.
You can do it--you must do it--you will do it.
Sympathy
Are you of a sympathetic nature?
If so, do not let your sympathies help to add to the world"s miseries.
That may seem a strange expression, but it can be explained if you will listen.
Much of the misery in the world is the result of imagination.
All of it is the result of selfishness and ignorance.
But hundreds and thousands of people believe themselves sick, sorrowful and poverty stricken, who would be well, glad and prosperous, if they only thought themselves so.
Every time you pour out your sympathy upon these self-made sufferers, you add to their burden of wrong thought, and make it just so much more difficult for them to rise out of their troubles.
I do not believe all the misfortune in the world is caused by wrong thinking in this life, or can be done away with by right thinking. The three-year-old child who toddles in front of a trolley car and loses a leg, while the tired mother is bending over the washtub to keep the wolf of hunger at bay, cannot be blamed for wrong thinking as the cause of its trouble. Neither can the deaf mute or the child born blind or deformed. We must go farther back, to former lives, to find the first cause of such misfortunes.
No "New Thought," no amount of optimistic theology or philosophy can restore the child"s leg, or ears, or eyes. It is utter nonsense to say that miracles like these can be performed.
There are scores of individuals whom we meet handicapped in life"s race by such dire calamities that we spontaneously pour forth our sympathy.
But, even to these, it were kinder and wiser to give diverting thoughts, and a new outlook, and to open up avenues for pleasure, and entertainment, and profit, in place of tears and condolence.
Sympathy, without alleviating actions to a sufferer, is like a cloud without rain to the parched earth.
But the great majority of people whom we encounter are making their own crosses, and we who offer them sympathy, and condolence, are but adding to the burden"s weight.
I do not recommend coldness, indifference, or ridicule as a subst.i.tute for sympathy. But instead of leading the sick man on to tell you the details of his illness, and to describe all his symptoms, while your own body responds with sympathetic aches and pains as you listen, it is kinder to divert his attention to some cheerful and merry topic, or to refer to some case like his own which resulted in perfect restoration to health. Instead of going down into his underground cave of depression, bring him out into the wholesome sunlight of your own healthful state, even if for a moment only, and impress upon his mind that health belongs to him, and must return to him.
To the man in business trouble the same advice applies.
Tell him you are sorry for him, but do not take on his despondency to prove it.
Talk of the future and all the possibilities it holds for a determined man or woman.
Make him laugh. Speak of trouble as the gymnasium where our moral muscles are developed. Answer him that everything he desires is his if he will be persistent and determined in demanding his own. If you put force in your words you will leave an impression.
Do not go away from the house of trouble in tears, but leave the troubled ones you called upon smiling as you depart.
That is true sympathy.
The Breath
A man reproved me for my interest in New Thought creeds.
"The old religion I learned at my mother"s knee is good enough for me!"
he said. "It is good enough for anybody!"
Yet this man"s mother had always "enjoyed poor health," as the old lady expressed it, and the man himself was forever talking of his diseases, his ill luck, his poverty, which he said he had been enabled to endure only through the sustaining power of the religion "learned at his mother"s knee."