What All The World's A-Seeking: The Vital Law of True Life, True Greatness Power and Happiness — John Shaqi
What All The World's A-Seeking: The Vital Law of True Life, True Greatness Power and HappinessTrine, Ralph Waldo
Religion
What All The World's A-Seeking: The Vital Law of True Life, True Greatness Power and Happiness
Trine, Ralph Waldo
Character; Christian life; Conduct of life
One beautiful feature of this principle of love and service is that this
phase of one's personality, or nature, can be grown. I have heard it
asked, If one hasn't it to any marked degree naturally, what is to be
done? In reply let it be said, Forget self, get out of it for a little
while, and, as it comes in your way, do something for some one, some
kind service, some loving favor, it makes no difference how _small_ it
may appear. But a kind look or word to one weary with care, from whose
life all worth living for seems to have gone out; a helping hand or
little lift to one almost discouraged,--it may be that this is just the
critical moment, a helping hand just now may change a life or a destiny.
Show yourself a friend to one who thinks he or she is friendless.
Oh, there are a thousand opportunities each day right where you
are,--not the great things far away, but the little things right at
hand. With a heart full of love do something: experience the rich
returns that will come to you, and it will be unnecessary to urge a
repetition or a continuance. The next time it will be easier and more
natural, and the next. You know of that wonderful reflex-nerve system
you have in your body,--that which says that whenever you do a certain
thing in a certain way, it is easier to do the same thing the next time,
and the next, and the next, until presently it is done with scarcely any
effort on your part at all, it has become your second nature. And thus
we have what? Habit. This is the way that all habit is, the way that all
habit must be formed. And have you ever fully realized that _life is,
after all, merely a series of habits_, and that it lies entirely within
one's own power to determine just what that series shall be?
I have seen this great principle made the foundation principle in an
institution of learning. It is made not a theory merely as I have seen
it here and there, but a vital, living truth. And I wish I had time to
tell of its wonderful and beautiful influences upon the life and work of
that institution, and upon the lives and the work of those who go out
from it. A joy indeed to be there. One can't enter within its walls even
for a few moments without feeling its benign influences. One can't go
out without taking them with him. I have seen purposes and lives almost
or quite transformed; and life so rich, so beautiful, and so valuable
opened up, such as the persons never dreamed could be, by being but a
single year under these beautiful and life-giving influences.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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