Life is worth living if it be lived in a way that is worth living. Man does not own his life,—to do with as he will. He has merely a life-interest in it. He must finally surrender it,—with an accounting. At each New Year tide it is common to make new resolutions, but in the true life of the individual each day is the beginning of a New Year if he will only make it so. A mere date on the calendar of eternity is no more a divider of time than a particular grain of sand divides the desert. Let us not make heroic resolutions so far beyond our strength that the resolution becomes a dead memory within a week; but let us promise ourselves that each day will be the new beginning of a newer, better and truer life for ourselves, for those around us, and for the world. VIII Syndicating Our Sorrows The most selfish man in the world is the one who is most unselfish,—with his sorrows. He does not leave a single misery of his untold to you, or unsuffered by you,—he gives you all of them. The world becomes to him a syndicate formed to take stock in his private cares, worries and trials. His mistake is in forming a syndicate; he should organize a trust and control it all himself, then he could keep everyone from getting any of his misery. Life is a great, serious problem for the individual. All our greatest joys and our deepest sorrows come to us,—alone. We must go into our Gethsemane,—alone. We must battle against the mighty weakness within us,—alone. We must live our own life,—alone. We must die,—alone. We must accept the full responsibility of our life,—alone. If each one of us has this mighty problem of life to solve for himself, if each of us has his own cares, responsibilities, failures, doubts, fears, bereavements, we surely are playing a coward’s part when we syndicate our sorrows to others. We should seek to make life brighter for others; we should seek to hearten them in their trials by the example of our courage in bearing our sorrows. We should seek to forget our failures, and remember only the new wisdom they gave us; we should live down our griefs by counting the joys and privileges still left to us; put behind us our worries and regrets, and face each new day of life as bravely as we can. But we have no right to retail our sorrow and unhappiness through the community. Autobiography constitutes a large part of the conversation of some people. It is not really conversation,—it is an uninterrupted monologue. These people study their individual lives with a microscope, and then they throw an enlarged view of their miseries on a screen and lecture on them, as a stereopticon man discourses on the microbes in a drop of water. They tell you that “they did not sleep a wink all night; they heard the clock strike every quarter of an hour.” Now, there is no real cause for thus boasting of insomnia. It requires no peculiar talent,—even though it does come only to wide-awake people.