life-work. The sort of ambition he condemns is that in which egotism and vanity figure most conspicuously, and in which notoriety, the praise and admiration of the world, wealth, and personal aggrandizement are the objects sought, rather than the power to be of use in the world, to be a leader in the service of humanity, and to be the noblest, best, and most efficient worker that one can be.
If you would “be young when old,” adopt the sundial’s motto—“I record none but the hours of sunshine.” Never mind the dark or shadowed hours. Forget the unpleasant, unhappy days. Remember only the days of rich experiences; let the others drop into oblivion.
It is said that “long livers are great hopers.” If you keep your hope bright in spite of discouragements, and meet all difficulties with a cheerful face, it will be very difficult for age to trace its furrows on your brow". There is longevity in cheerfulness.
“Don't let go of love, or love of romance; they are amulets against wrinkles.” If the mind is constantly bathed in love, and filled with helpful, charitable sentiments toward all, the body will keep fresh and vigorous many years longer than it mil if the heart is dried up and emptied of human sympathy by a greedy life. The heart that is kept warm by love is never frozen by age or chilled by prejudice, fear, or anxious thought. A French beauty used to have herself massaged with mutton tallow every night in order to keep her muscles elastic and her body supple. A better way of preserving youthful elasticity is coming into vogue, massaging the mind with love thoughts, beauty thoughts, cheerful thoughts, and young ideals.
If you do not want the years to count, look forward instead of backward, and put as much variety and as many interests into your life as possible. Monotony and lack of mental occupation are great age producers. Women who live in cities in the midst of many interests and great variety, preserve their youth and good lodes, as a rule, much longer than women who live in remote country places, who get no variety into their lives, and who have no interests outside of their narrow, daily round of monotonous duties, which require no exercise of mind. Insanity is an alarmingly increasing result of monotony of women’s lives on the farm. Ellen Terry and Sarah Bernhardt, “who seem to have the ageless brightness of the stars,” attribute their youthfulness to action, change of thought and scene, and mental occupation. It is worth noting, too, that farmers who live so much outdoors, and in an environment much more healthful than that of the average brain-worker, do not live so long as the latter.
Indeed, a physician testifying in the London law courts stated that softening of the brain was a common malady of the rural laborers of England. Their brains, he said, rather rusted out from lack of brain exercise, than wore out, and at an age from sixty-five to seventy-five they usually died of apoplexy or some similar disease. In contrast to the farmers, he cited judges and similar hard brain-workers who lived much longer and kept their mental powers.
When Solon, the Athenian sage, was asked the secret of his strength and youth, he replied that it was “learning something new every day.” This belief was general among the ancient Greeks—that the secret of eternal youth is “to be always learning something new.”
There is the basis of a great truth in the idea. It is healthful activity that strengthens and preserves the mind as well as the body, and gives it youthful quickness and activity. So if you would be young, in spite of the years, you must remain receptive to new thought and must grow broader in spirit, wider in sympathy, and more and more open to fresh revelations of truth as you travel farther on the road of life.
But the greatest conqueror of age is a cheerful, hopeful, loving spirit. A man who would conquer the years must have charity for all. He must avoid worry, envy, malice, and jealousy; all the small meannesses that feed bitterness in the heart, trace wrinkles on the brow, and dim the eye. A pure heart, a sound body, and a broad, healthy, generous mind, backed by a determination not to let the years count, constitute a fountain of youth which every one may find in himself.
“Here, then,” says Margaret Deland, “are the three deadly symptoms of old age: selfishness, stagnation, intolerance. If we find them in ourselves, we may know we are growing old—even if we are on the merry side of thirty. But, happily, we have three defences, which are invulnerable; if we use them, we shall die young if we live to be a hundred. They are: sympathy, progress, tolerance. The men or women who have these divine qualities of sympathy, progress, and tolerance are forever young; their very existence cries out to the rest of us, sursum corda! ”
“The best is yet to bet!
The last of life
For which the first was made.”
Chapter XX.
How To Control Thought
Ordain for thyself forthwith a certain form and type of conduct, which thou shalt maintain, both alone, and, when it may chance, among men.—Epictetus.
IT is possible to change the character of the mind by habitually controlling the thought. There is no reason why we should allow the mind to wander into all sorts of fields, and to dwell upon all sorts of subjects at random. The ego, the will power, or what we call the real self, the governor of the mind, can dominate the thought. With a little practice, we can control and concentrate the mind in any reasonable way we please.
Attention, therefore, controlled by the will and directed by reason and higher judgment, can so discipline the mind and thought that they will dwell on higher ideals, until high thinking has become a habit. Then the lower ideals and lower thinking will drop out of consciousness, and the mind will be left upon a higher plane. It is only a question of discipline.
Many and varied are the methods prescribed by various writers for gaining desired thought control, but on comparing them there is, after all, much in common, and that is the simplest and most practical part The more elaborate formulae and mysticism may be left to those who enjoy such exercises.
“It is not possible to give explicit directions for an American substitute for Hindu Yoga practice,” says W. J. Colville, “as the general needs of the Anglo-Saxon race are not the same outwardly as those of their dark-skinned Oriental brethren; but the great words concentration and meditation are just as forceful and full of meaning in the West as in the East. To concentrate on one’s beloved goal, to see before the mental eye the prize as though it were already won, while we are all the while intensely conscious of moving nearer to its extemalization, is so to place ourselves in relation with all that helps us on our way, that one by one obstacles vanish, and what seemed once too hard for human strength to accomplish appears now plain and even simple. The greatest need of all is to keep the goal in sight and not let interest flag or inward vision waver.
“A good lesson for all to practise is to take some special aspiration into the silence, and there realize its fulfillment with all the intensity of your visualistic ability. See yourself in the very place in which you most desire to be engaged, in the very work you would love best to accomplish. A little persistent industry in this exercise will soon relieve the intellect of worry, and gradually open up the understanding to perceive how to accomplish the otherwise unaccomplishable. There is no substitute for work in all the universe, therefore let none imagine that a state of inoperative, dreamy contemplation is one to be recommended. Outward work must follow inward contemplation. True meditation does not absolve us from the need of making effort, but it is a means for revealing to us what efforts we need to make and how to make them.”
Something the same process is recommended by a writer who says: “Go into the silence, concentrate your mind, polarize thought, breathe in the power and strength that is ever within the reach of all, and in
