The Majesty of Calmness; individual problems and posibilities eBook

Hurry is the deathblow to calmness, to dignity, to poise.  The old-time courtesy went out when the new-time hurry came in.  Hurry is the father of dyspepsia.  In the rush of our national life, the bolting of food has become a national vice.  The words “Quick Lunches” might properly be placed on thousands of headstones in our cemeteries.  Man forgets that he is the only animal that dines; the others merely feed.  Why does he abrogate his right to dine and go to the end of the line with the mere feeders?  His self-respecting stomach rebels, and expresses its indignation by indigestion.  Then man has to go through life with a little bottle of pepsin tablets in his vest-pocket.  He is but another victim to this craze for speed.  Hurry means the breakdown of the nerves.  It is the royal road to nervous prostration.

Everything that is great in life is the product of slow growth; the newer, and greater, and higher, and nobler the work, the slower is its growth, the surer is its lasting success.  Mushrooms attain their full power in a night; oaks require decades.  A fad lives its life in a few weeks; a philosophy lives through generations and centuries.  If you are sure you are right, do not let the voice of the world, or of friends, or of family swerve you for a moment from your purpose.  Accept slow growth if it must be slow, and know the results must come, as you would accept the long, lonely hours of the night,—­with absolute assurance that the heavy-leaded moments must bring the morning.

Let us as individuals banish the word “Hurry” from our lives.  Let us care for nothing so much that we would pay honor and self-respect as the price of hurrying it.  Let us cultivate calmness, restfulness, poise, sweetness,—­doing our best, bearing all things as bravely as we can; living our life undisturbed by the prosperity of the wicked or the malice of the envious.  Let us not be impatient, chafing at delay, fretting over failure, wearying over results, and weakening under opposition.  Let us ever turn our face toward the future with confidence and trust, with the calmness of a life in harmony with itself, true to its ideals, and slowly and constantly progressing toward their realization.

Let us see that cowardly word Hurry in all its most degenerating phases, let us see that it ever kills truth, loyalty, thoroughness; and let us determine that, day by day, we will seek more and more to substitute for it the calmness and repose of a true life, nobly lived.

III

The Power of Personal Influence

The only responsibility that a man cannot evade in this life is the one he thinks of least,—­his personal influence.  Man’s conscious influence, when he is on dress-parade, when he is posing to impress those around him,—­is woefully small.  But his unconscious influence, the silent, subtle radiation of his personality, the effect of his words and acts, the trifles he never considers,—­is tremendous.  Every moment of life he is changing to a degree the life of the whole world.  Every man has an atmosphere which is affecting every other.  So silent and unconsciously is this influence working, that man may forget that it exists.