to redeem yourself from ignorance at any cost is the first great step toward gaining an education.
Charles Wagner once wrote to an American regarding his little boy, “May he know the price of the hours. God bless the rising boy who will do his best, for never losing a bit of the precious and God-given time.”
There is untold wealth locked up in the long winter evenings and odd moments ahead of you. A great opportunity confronts you. What will you do with it?
Chapter IV.
Freedom At Any Cost
WERE you to decide to risk your reputation, your material welfare, your whole future, upon some great physical or mental contest which should extend over a considerable period of time, you would begin long beforehand to train or discipline yourself for the decisive conflict. You would not, if possible to avoid doing so, go into it handicapped.
Every person who is ambitious to make his life count, to do what is worth while, is entering upon just such a contest. In starting upon a conflict so grave, so significant, and which affects the whole future, the first thing to do is to get absolute freedom from everything which strangles ambition, discourages effort, and hinders progress; freedom from everything which saps vitality, enslaves the faculties, and wastes energy; to remove every obstruction from the way and leave a clear path to one's goal.
No matter how ambitious a runner may be to win, if he does not train off his surplus fat, if he is hampered with extra clothing, or runs with feet cramped and sore, his race is lost.
The trouble with most of us is that, while ambitious to succeed, we do not put ourselves in a condition to win; we do not cut the cords which bind us, or try to get rid of the entanglements and obstructions that hinder us. We trust too much to luck.
To eliminate everything that can possibly retard us, to get into as harmonious an environment as possible, is the first preparation for a successful career. There are tens of thousands of people who have ability and inclination to rise out of mediocrity, and to do something worth while in the world, but who never do so because they cannot break the chains that bind their movements. Most of us are so bound in some part of our nature that we cannot get free; cannot gain the liberty to do the larger thing possible to us. We go through life doing the smaller, the meaner, when the larger, the grander would be possible could we get rid of the things that handicap us.
Every normal man has a reserve power within him, a mighty coil of force and purpose, which would enable him to make his life strong and complete, were he free to express the largest and the best things in him, were he not fettered by some bond, physical or moral.
You can tie a strong horse with a very small cord, and he cannot show his greatest speed or strength till he is free. On every hand we see people with splendid ability tied down by some apparently insignificant thing which handicaps all their movements. They cannot go ahead until they are free.
A giant would be a weakling if he were confined in so small a space that he did not have room to exert himself with freedom.
The majority of people live in a cramped and uncongenial environment; in an atmosphere which dampens enthusiasm, discourages ambition and effort, scatters energy, and wastes time. They have not the courage or stamina to cut the shackles that bind them, to throw away all crutches and props, and to rely on themselves to get into an environment where they can do what they desire. Their ambition finally dies through discouragement and inaction.
I recall the case of a youth with artistic 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.
