| The Secrets of a Beautiful Life |
Chapter 19 |
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But there are many things, not just to our mind, which we cannot alter. Many young people fret over the limitations of their home, the narrowness of their opportunities. If only they had the home and the opportunities of some envied neighbour, they would get on so much better and make so much more of their life. They have to work constantly on the farm or in the shop. They have no time for reading. Their home is without cheerfulness. They love it, of course, but it lacks the privileges they crave.
Now, what good can ever come from worrying over such things? The noble way is to accept the conditions that are hard and live cheerfully in them. Hard work is made easier when one can sing at it. Burdens are made lighter when one’s heart is full of joy. When we acquiesce in any unpleasant experience, we have conquered the unpleasantness. A thoughtful writer says: “The soul loses command of itself when it is impatient, whereas, when it submits without a murmur, it possesses itself in peace, and possesses God… When we acquiesce in an evil, it is no longer such. Why make a real calamity of it by resistance? Peace does not dwell in outward things, but within the soul. We may preserve it in the midst of bitterest pain if our will remain firm and submissive. Peace in this life springs from acquiescence, even in disagreeable things, not in exemption from bearing them.”
Besides, the very hardness of our condition is ofttimes that from which the greatest blessing comes. The world’s best men have not been grown in easy circumstances. Pampered, petted boys do not usually make the heroes and the great men of their generation. Hardship in early years, nine times out of ten, is that which makes a man strong and stalwart and a power among men when he reaches his primes. Herodotus wrote: “It is a law of nature that faint-hearted men should be the fruit of luxurious countries; for we never find that the same soil produces delicacies and heroes.” Therefore, instead of worrying over the rough, stern, and severe things in his environment, a healthy, wholesome boy ought to set to work to master them, and in mastering them get strength and victoriousness for his own life.
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