Take a half hour at the time when you can be alone and see into
yourself. Search well your heart and learn just what you said or did
that you regret. Then find out what caused you to be disagreeable,
what has put you out with your better self. Write these thoughts and
desires down where you can privately refer to them daily. Take the
first mistake and stick to the memory of it so that, when the impulse
comes to repeat it, you can check yourself. Drilling yourself this
way, you will soon learn to conquer this one fault. Then start in the
same way at another fault and conquer that. Don’t try to exercise all
the powers of resistance at once, for if you do, there are bound to
be failures and too many of these make for discouragement, and then
follows recklessness. You would not try to develop a weak back by going
from an apparatus meant to develop the thighs to another one for the
chest, and then back again for a few moments to that for strengthening
the back muscles. No, you stick to the work which develops the back
until you have made some decided progress. The inner self, the will,
the good girl in you, should be developed in the same way.
You want to go to a dance or perhaps the theater, “all the other girls
are going,” but your mother has good and sufficient reasons for not
allowing you to go. Now, instead of arguing, complaining and going off
to your room in a huff, saying unkind words to your good mother, words
which tear and gnaw at her heart, speak to that inner self; call it
out; go to your room and peer straight into the trouble with YOU, not
that wrong idea that the fault is with your mother.
Think deeply of this fact; she is your mother, nothing that would
add to your pleasure or advantage would she deprive you of――not for
an instant. But as your mother she knows what is best for you; she
may know something about the other girls, about the kind of youths
going with them, she may know something about your health that is not
advisable to tell you just at the moment. In your room think all these
matters over; throw out that unreasonable and false self, and when you
have done so, go to your mother, ask her forgiveness and also beg her
to tell you her reasons.
Now that your inner self is in control, your mother will tell you
confidentially her reasons, and when they are clear to you, the
happiness which follows is far beyond any mere physical pleasure you
can ever obtain. After a few times of this self-drilling, the obedience
to your mother will be a second nature.
Still more fights with your inner self will have to follow, but one by
one, you can conquer the enemy. Never become discouraged if you fail,
just keep on trying and in the end you will win over all evil and wrong
impulses.
A girl who disobeys her mother or father is the girl who as a wife will
be divorced.
The girl who wants to “be a good Indian” will, when a woman, be a
repulsive savage.
The girl who deceives her mother will deceive her husband.
All men know this fact.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account