During a terrific storm a few years ago a ship was driven far out of
her course, and, helpless and disabled, was carried into a strange bay.
The water supply gave out, and the crew suffered the agony of thirst,
yet dared not drink of the salt water in which their vessel floated. In
the last extremity they lowered a bucket over the ship’s side, and in
desperation quaffed the beverage they thought was sea-water. But to
their joy and amazement the water was fresh, cool and life-giving. They
were in a fresh-water arm of the sea, and they did not know it. They had
simply to reach down and accept the new life and strength for which they
prayed.
Man, to-day, heart-weary with the sorrow, sin and failure of his past
life, feels that he could live a better life if he could only have
another chance, if he could only live life over again, if he could only
start afresh with his present knowledge and experience. He looks back
with regretful memory to the golden days of youth and sadly mourns his
wasted chances. He then turns hopefully to the thought of a life to
come. But, helpless, he stands between the two ends of life, yet
thirsting for the chance to live a new life, according to his bettered
condition for living it. In his blindness and unknowing, he does not
realize, like the storm-driven sailors, that the new life is all around
him; he has but to reach out and take it. Every day is a new life, every
sunrise but a new birth for himself and the world, every morning the
beginning of a new existence for him, a new, great chance to put to new
and higher uses the results of his past living.
The man who looks back upon his past life and says, “I have nothing to
regret,” has lived in vain. The life without regret is the life without
gain. Regret is but the light of fuller wisdom, from our past,
illumining our future. It means that we are wiser to-day than we were
yesterday. This new wisdom means new responsibility, new privileges; it
is a new chance for a better life. But if regret remain merely “regret,”
it is useless; it must become the revelation of new possibilities, and
the inspiration and source of strength to realize them. Even omnipotence
could not change the past, but each man, to a degree far beyond his
knowing, holds his future in his own hands.
If man were sincere in his longing to live life over he would get more
help from his failures. If he realize his wasted golden hours of
opportunity, let him not waste other hours in useless regret, but seek
to forget his folly and to keep before him only the lessons of it. His
past extravagance of time should lead him to minify his loss by
marvellous economy of present moments. If his whole life be darkened by
the memory of a cruel wrong he has done another, if direct amends be
impossible to the injured one, passed from life, let him make the world
the legatee to receive his expressions of restitution. Let his regret
and sorrow be manifest in words of kindness and sympathy, and acts of
sweetness and love given to all with whom he comes in contact. If he
regrets a war he has made against one individual, let him place the
entire world on his pension list. If a man make a certain mistake once,
the only way he can properly express his recognition of it is not to
make a similar mistake later. Josh Billings once said: “A man who is
bitten twice by the same dog is better adapted to that business than any
other.”
There are many people in this world who want to live life over because
they take such pride in their past. They resemble the beggars in the
street who tell you they “have seen better days.” It is not what man
_was_ that shows character; it is what he progressively _is_. Trying to
obtain a present record on a dead past is like some present-day
mediocrity that tries to live on its ancestry. We look for the fruit in
the branches of the family tree, not in the roots. Showing how a family
degenerated from a noble ancestor of generations ago to its present
representative is not a boast;—it is an unnecessary confession. Let man
think less of his own ancestors and more of those he is preparing for
his posterity; less of his past virtue, and more of his future.
When man pleads for a chance to live life over, there is always an
implied plea of inexperience, of a lack of knowledge. This is unworthy,
even of a coward. We know the laws of health, yet we ignore them or defy
them every day. We know what is the proper food for us, individually, to
eat, yet we gratify our appetites and trust to our cleverness to square
the account with Nature somehow. We know that success is a matter of
simple, clearly defined laws, of the development of mental essentials,
of tireless energy and concentration, of constant payment of price,—we
know all this, and yet we do not live up to our knowledge. We constantly
eclipse ourselves by ourselves, and then we blame Fate.
Parents often counsel their children against certain things, and do them
themselves, in the foolish hope that the children will believe their
ears in preference to their eyes. Years of careful teaching of a child
to be honest and truthful may be nullified in an instant by a parent’s
lying to a conductor about a child’s age to save a nickel. That may be a
very expensive street-car ride for the child,—and for the parent. It
may be part of the spirit of the age to believe that it is no sin to
cheat a corporation or a trust, but it is unwise to give the child so
striking an example at an age when it cannot detect the sophistry.
Man’s only plea for a chance to live life again is that he has gained in
wisdom and experience. If he be really in earnest, then he can live life
over, he can live life anew, he can live the new life that comes to him
day by day. Let him leave to the past, to the aggregated thousands of
yesterdays, all their mistakes, sin, sorrow, misery and folly, and start
afresh. Let him close the books of his old life, let him strike a
balance, and start anew, crediting himself with all the wisdom he has
gained from his past failure and weakness, and charging himself with the
new duties and responsibilities that come from the possession of his new
capital of wisdom. Let him criticise others less and himself more,—and
start out bravely in this new life he is to live.
What the world needs is more day-to-day living; starting in the morning
with fresh, clear ideals for that day, and seeking to live that day, and
each successive hour and moment of that day, as if it were all time and
all eternity. This has in it no element of disregard for the future, for
each day is set in harmony with that future. It is like the sea-captain
heading his vessel toward his port of destination, and day by day
keeping her steaming toward it. This view of living kills morbid regret
of the past, and morbid worry about the future. Most people want large,
guaranteed slices of life; they would not be satisfied with manna fresh
every day, as was given to the children of Israel; they want grain
elevators filled with daily bread.
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.