But there is, of course, no magic in merely choosing an occupation. If you
do nothing to an occupation but choose it, it can do nothing at all to you.
If you are an incorrigible lover of holidays, so that the arrival of a
working-day makes you sick, if every task thrust into your hands grows
intolerable, if every calling, as soon as you have touched its drudgery,
grows hateful--that is to have the soul of a tramp. It is to be stricken
with incurable poverty. You turn your back upon every company of men where
anything worth while is to be done. You shut out of yourself every wisdom
and skill which civilized work develops in a man. And you grow not empty
but full, choked with evil life. Wretched are they that hunger and thirst
after nothing good, for they also shall be filled. Herein is democracy,
that whether you are a beggar's son or the son of Croesus you cannot escape
from yourself--you cannot bribe or frighten yourself into being anything
else than what your own hungers and thirsts have made you.
It is somewhat better but far from well enough if you enter many
occupations, but stay in none long enough to receive thorough
apprenticeship.
It is so ordered that it is easy for most of us to make a fair beginning at
almost anything. In the rough and tumble of babyhood and youth we all
accumulate experiences which are raw material for any and every occupation.
So when one of them kindles in you a light blaze of curiosity, you have
only to pull yourself together, you have only to mobilize your forces, and
you are presently enjoying little successes that surprise and delight you
and that may give you the illusion of mastery.
Doubtless the World Soul knows his own affairs in ordering this so. For one
thing, the easy initial victories are fine baits, lures, by which youths
are caught and drawn into serious apprenticeship. For another thing, the
influence of each occupation upon society in general must be exercised
largely through men who carry some intelligence of it into other
occupations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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