talent who let precious years go by, drifting by accident from one vocation to another, without encouraging this God-given ability or making any great effort to get rid of the little things which stood in the way of a great career, although he was always haunted by a longing for it. He was conscientious in his everyday work, but his heart was never in it. His artistic nature yearned for expression; to get away from the work against which every faculty protested, and to go abroad and study; but he was poor, and, although his work was drudgery and his whole soul loathed it, he was afraid of the hardships and the obstacles he would have to encounter if he answered the call that ran in his blood. He kept resolving to break away and to follow the promptings of his ambition, but he also kept waiting and waiting for a more favorable opportunity, until, after a number of years, he found other things crowding into his life. His longing for art became fainter and fainter; the call was less and less imperative. Now he rarely speaks of his early aspirations, for his ambition is practically dead. Those who know him feel that something grand and sacred has gone out of him, and that, although he has been industrious and honest, he has never expressed-the real meaning of his life, the highest thing in him.
I know a woman who in her youth and early womanhood had marked musical ability—a voice rich, powerful, sympathetic. She had also a beautiful face and a magnetic personality. Nature had been very generous to her and she longed to express her remarkable powers, but she was in a most discouraging environment. Her family did not understand her or sympathize with her ambition; and she finally became accustomed to her shackles and, like a prisoner, ceased to struggle for freedom. A songstress of international fame who heard her voice said that she had it in her to make one of the world’s greatest singers. But she yielded to the wishes of her parents and the fascinations of society until the ambition gradually died out of her life. She says that the dying of this great passion was indescribably painful. She settled down to the duties of a wife, but has never been really happy, and has always carried in her face an absent, far-away look of disappointment. Her unused talent was a great loss to the world, and a loss indescribable to herself. She drags out a dissatisfied existence, always regretting the past, and vainly wishing, that, instead of letting her ambition die, she had struggled to realize it.
Timidity also hinders freedom. Thousands of able young men and young women in this country are ambitious to make the most of themselves, but are completely fettered or held back by an abnormal timidity, a lack of self-faith. They feel great unused powers within struggling for expression, but dread that they may fail. The fear of being thought forward or egotistical seals their lips, palsies their hands, and drives their ambition back upon itself to die of inaction. They do not dare to give up a certainty for an uncertainty; they are afraid to push ahead. They wait and wait, hoping that some mysterious power may liberate them and give them confidence and hope.
Many people are imprisoned by ignorance. They never reach the freedom which education gives. Their mental powers are never unlocked. They have not the grit to struggle for emancipation, the stamina to make up for the lack of early training. They think they are too old to begin; the price of freedom seems too high to pay at their time of life, and so they plod upon a low plain when they could have gained the heights where superiority dwells. Others are so bound by the fetters of prejudice and superstition that their lives are narrow and mean. These are the most hopeless of all. They are so blinded that they do not even know they are not free, but they think other people are in prison.
If you would attain that largeness of life, that fulness of self-expression, which expands all the faculties, you must get freedom at any cost. Nothing will compensate you for stifling the best thing in you. Bring it out at any sacrifice. It often takes a great deal of friction, of suffering, of struggling with obstacles and misfortunes, before the true strength of one’s character is brought out. The diamond could never reveal its depths of brilliancy and beauty, but for the friction of the stone which grinds its facets, polishes it, and lets in the light which discloses its hidden wealth. This is the price of its liberation from darkness.
Ask the majority of men and women who have done great things in the world, to what they owe their strength, their breadth of mind, and the diversity of experience which has enriched their lives. They will tell you that these are the fruits of struggle; that they acquired their finest discipline, their best character drill, in the effort to escape from an uncongenial environment; to break the bonds which enslaved them; to obtain an education; to get away from poverty; to carry out some cherished plan; to reach their ideal, whatever it was.
The efforts we are obliged to make to free ourselves from the bonds of poverty or heredity, of passion or prejudice,—whatever it is that holds us back from our heart’s desire,—call to our aid spiritual and physical resources which would have remained forever unused, perhaps undiscovered, but for the necessity thrust upon us.
Unsatisfied longings and stifled ambitions eat away the very heart of desire. They sap strength of character, destroy hope, and blot out ideals. They play havoc with the lives of men and women, they make them mere shells, empty promises of what they might have been.
I do not believe that anybody in any circumstances can be happy until he expresses that which God has made to dominate in his life; until he has given vent to that grand passion which speaks loudest in his nature; until he has made the best use of that gift which was intended to take precedence of all his other powers.
“No man can live a half life when he has genuinely learned that it is a half life,” said Phillips Brooks. After we have gained a glimpse of a life higher and better than we have been living, we must either break the bonds that bind us and struggle towards the attainment of that which we see, or development will cease and deterioration set in. Even the longing to reach an ideal will soon die out if no effort is made to satisfy it. No one should follow a vocation, except by inevitable compulsion, which does not tend to unlock his prison-house and let out the man. No one should voluntarily remain in an environment which prevents his development. Civilization owes its greatest triumphs to the struggles of men and women to free themselves from the bonds of circumstance.
No man can live a full life while he is bound in any part of his nature. He must have freedom of thought as well as freedom of action to grow to his full height. There must be no shackles on his conscience, no stifling of his best powers.
Be yourself. Do not lean or apologize. Few people belong to themselves. They are slaves to their creditors or to some entangling alliance. They do not do what they want to. They do what they are compelled to do, giving up their best energy to make a living, so that there is practically nothing left to make a life.
There are plenty of men to-day working for others, who really have more ability than their employers; but who have been so enslaved, so entangled and faculty-bound by debt or unfortunate alliances, that they have not been able to get the freedom to express their ability.
Can anything compensate a promising young man for the loss of his freedom of action, his liberty of speech and conviction? Can any money pay him for cringing and crawling, sneaking and apologizing throughout his life, when it is within his power to hold up his head and without wincing look the world squarely in the face?
Never put yourself in a position, no matter what the inducement—whether a big salary or other financial reward, or the promise of position or influence,—where you cannot act the part of a man. Let no consideration tie your tongue or purchase your opinion. Regard your independence as your inalienable right, with which you will never part for any consideration.
One talent with freedom is infinitely better than genius tied up and entangled so that it must do everything at a disadvantage. Of what use is a giant intellect so restrained and hampered that it can only do a pygmy’s work?
To make the most of ourselves, we must cut off whatever drains vitality—physical or moral—and stop all the waste of life. We must cut off everything which causes friction, which tends to weaken effort, lower the ideals, and drag down the life standards; everything which tends to kill the ambition and
