Living the Radiant Life: A Personal NarrativeJames, George Wharton
Religion
Living the Radiant Life: A Personal Narrative
James, George Wharton
Conduct of life
Will to do great, noble, beneficent things and that
will be willing to be good "for something."
The third thing in connection with the human will that I wish to
radiate is what I might term "the insistence of the human will." After I
have willed to be "Divine-willed," and to "will to achieve a high and
noble purpose," I want to compel my will to keep on willing that which I
have already willed. It is comparatively easy to will to do, or be,
something, but alas! how far short some of us come from attaining that
which we have willed to be. When Jesus sent out His disciples He gave
them many warnings, much encouragement, informed them of the
difficulties they would encounter, and then incited them to persistence
of endeavor by assuring them that "He that endureth to the end shall be
saved." It is this thought of "endurance," or "persistence" that I would
ever radiate. I have set before me an aim, an object, worthy to be
achieved. Though it may be difficult to attain, I will to keep on
willing until it is attained.
A short time ago I watched the students at the Physical Culture Training
School, in Chicago. It gives me a good illustration of what I would ever
radiate.
I saw the leader of one of the classes do a particular act, and then the
students, one after another, tried to follow the leader in doing that
thing. Some of the men who tried, willed to do it all right, but they
did not succeed. Many times a man wills to do a thing when he does not
seem competent, but the real man keeps on until he makes himself
competent. So with some of these. They went back and tried again--and
went back and tried again, and the men who willed and then kept at it
until they became competent were the ones that achieved.
One of the great lessons of all life is, not merely to learn to
will--that is easy enough--but to insist upon the will keeping at it
until we accomplish what we have determined to do. We "will" every day
to do things, and yet we do not do them. We say, "I am going to do this;
I am going to do that; or the other." We start out in life and we have
all kinds of ambitions and aspirations before us, and we say, "This is
going to be my achievement; I intend to accomplish this thing." But we
get to be twenty-five--thirty years of age, and we have not
achieved--that is, the great mass of people have not.
Why?
Because we have not learned this lesson of the Insistence of the Human
Will. We have determined to do a thing and then we have not had the
power or the courage or the determination or the endurance to keep on
willing until the thing desired was achieved.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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