It is his own fault, not the fault of God, fate or accident.
If every life seems at times "unsatisfactory" and "inadequate" it is
only due to the cry of the immortal soul longing for larger
opportunities and fewer limitations.
Neither is life "false to hope." He who trusts the divine Source of
Life, shall find his hopes more than realized here upon earth. I but
voice the knowledge of thousands of souls, when I make this assertion.
I know whereof I speak.
All that our dearest hopes desire will come to us, if we believe in
ourselves as rightful heirs to Divine Opulence, and work and think
always on those lines.
If "no whisper has ever reached us out of the void" confirming our
faith in immortality, then one-third of the seemingly intelligent and
sane beings of our acquaintance must be fools or liars. For we have
the assertion of fully this number that such whispers have come,
besides the Biblical statistics of numerous messages from the other
realm. "As it was in the beginning, is now and shall be ever more,
world without end, Amen."
Preparation
Every day I hear middle-aged people bemoaning the fact that they were
not given advantages or did not seize the opportunities for an
education in early youth.
They believe that their lives would be happier, better and more useful
had an education been obtained.
Scarcely one of these people realizes that middle life is the
schooltime for old age, and that just as important an opportunity is
being missed or ignored day by day for the storing up of valuable
knowledge which will be of great importance in rendering old age
endurable.
Youth is the season to acquire knowledge, middle life is the time to
acquire wisdom.
Old age is the season to enjoy both, but wisdom is far the more
important of the two.
By wisdom I mean the philosophy which enables us to control our
tempers, curb our tendency to severe criticism, and cultivate our
sympathies.
The majority of people after thirty-five consider themselves privileged
to be cross, irritable, critical and severe, because they have lived
longer than the young, because they have had more trials and
disappointments, and because they believe they understand the world
better.
Those are excellent reasons why they should be patient, kind, broad and
sympathetic.
The longer we live the more we should realize the folly and vulgarity
of ill-temper, the cruelty of severe criticism and the necessity for a
broad-minded view of life, manners, morals and customs.
Unless we adapt ourselves to the changing habits of the world, unless
we adopt some of the new ideas that are constantly coming to the front,
we will find ourselves carping, disagreeable and lonely old people as
the years go by.
The world will not stand still for us. Society will not wear the same
clothes or follow the same pleasures, or think the same thoughts when
we are eighty that were prevalent when we were thirty. We must keep
moving with the world or stand still and solitary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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