All of us meet with occasional blows from fate, in the form of insults,
or ingratitude, or trickery from an unexpected source.
But if we get nothing else but those disappointing experiences from
life, we may rest assured the fault lies somewhere in ourselves.
We are not sending out the right kind of mental stuff, or we would get
better returns.
You never can tell what your thoughts will do
In bringing you hate or love,
For thoughts are things, and their airy wings
Are swift as a carrier dove.
They follow the law of the universe--
Each thing must create its kind,
And they speed o'er the track to bring you back
Whatever went out from your mind.
In the main, we must of necessity get from humanity what we give to it.
If we question our ability to win friends or love, people will also
question it.
If we doubt our own judgment and discretion in business, others will
doubt it, and the shrewd and unprincipled will take the opportunity
given by our doubts of ourselves, to spring upon us.
If in consequence we distrust every person we meet, we create an
unwholesome and unfortunate atmosphere about ourselves, which will
bring to us the unworthy and deceitful. Stand firm in the universe.
Believe in yourself. Believe in others.
If you make a mistake, consider it only an incident.
If some one wrongs you, cheats, misuses or insults you, let it pass as
one of the lessons you had to learn, but do not imagine that you are
selected by fate for only such lessons. Keep wholesome, hopeful and
sympathetic with the world at large, whatever individuals may do.
Expect life to use you better every year, and it will not disappoint
you in the long run. For life is what we make it.
Eternity
Do you know what a wonderfully complicated thing a human being is?
Every feature, every portion of your body, every motion you make,
reflects your mental organization.
I know a woman past middle life who has always been on the opposite
side of every question discussed in her presence.
She was agnostic with the orthodox, reverential with atheists, liberal
with the narrow, bigoted with the liberal.
Whatever belief any one expressed on any subject, she invariably took
the other extreme. She loved to disagree with her fellow-men. It was
her pastime.
Now, to walk with that woman in silence is merely to carry on a
wordless argument.
You cannot regulate your steps so they will harmonize with hers. She
will be just ahead or just behind you, and if you want to turn to the
left, she pulls to the right. A promenade with her is more exhausting
than a day's labor.
She is not conscious of it, and would think anyone very unreasonable
and unjust who told her of her peculiarities.
I know a woman who all her life has been looking afar for happiness and
peace and content, and has never found any of them, because she did not
look in her own soul.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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