Living the Radiant Life: A Personal NarrativeJames, George Wharton
Religion
Living the Radiant Life: A Personal Narrative
James, George Wharton
Conduct of life
I want to radiate a joy in the little things of to-day. Most people live
in anticipation. The things of to-day are not enough. It is, "Oh,
tomorrow--next week--next year--will surely bring me my heart's desire!"
Let us learn that _to-day_ is the fulfillment of the heart's desire.
Take to-day _all_ it brings, and it will make _to-day_ so full that you
will have no care for the joys of anticipation. Live _now_, so
intensely, so fully, that life _to-day_ will be compelled to deliver up
all its treasures _to-day_. Hence every day becomes a perfect joy.
I want to radiate _inspiration_. I do not believe the idea that the
saints of old who wrote "the Bible," are the only examples of
inspiration. God inspires every good man and good woman, and all good
in all people comes from Him, for He is the original source.
A self-centered life is a selfish life; a life that gives of itself
freely and fully to all with whom it comes in contact is a life of
inspiration--it is a radiating center of inspiration. It inspires to
courage, to higher endeavor, to larger achievement. I need all this for
myself, but I also long and desire to inspire it in others. Many a life
seems to have inspiration for the carrying out of its own dreams,
ambitions, desires, but none to give away. Yet the lives we touch may
need just the impetus, the propelling force--light or vigorous--that we
can give to enable the fulfillment in them of half dormant ambitions for
good, the attainment of noble endeavor.
What would become of the chick in the egg if the mother hen did not
brood over it? She forgets her own desires to move about in the stronger
desire to bring into active being the hidden lives within the eggs. Let
us "brood" over the souls of men and women, young men and maidens, boys
and girls, and quicken to life the dormant powers of the weak, the
tender. Aspirations may have begun in them that can only be quickened by
warmth and love from outside. Oh, for wisdom, as well as love, to
"brood" aright.
This implies a reaching out to others. It means an ability to feel even
the hidden or only half-felt thoughts of others, and love and sympathy
alone are delicate enough instruments to thus feel. The seismograph,
that registers the oscillations of the earth's crust, is one of the most
delicate of man-made instruments, yet the human heart that would respond
unerringly to every beginning of aspiration and longing for good in
every other human soul must be ten thousand times more sensitive than
the seismograph. Such a sensitive instrument let each seek to become. We
should hear the faintest beat of the human hearts near us and try to
inspire those faint beats until they are strong, regular, powerful,
certain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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