any time when it might be required of
you."
No man, woman, or child knows the power, the very great power, for
work and play--there is with one who has in the background always
the ability to stop and do nothing.
If we observe enough, carefully enough, and quietly enough, to get
sensitive to it, we can see how every one about us is living in
excitement. I have seen women with nothing important to do come down
to breakfast in excitement, give their orders for the day as if they
were about running for a fire; and the standard of all those about
them is so low that no one notices what a human dust is stirred up
by all this flutter over nothing.
A man told me not long ago that he got tired out for the day in
walking to his office with a friend, because they both talked so
intensely. And that is not an unusual experience. This chronic state
of strain and excitement in everyday matters makes a mental
atmosphere which is akin to what the material atmosphere would be if
we were persistently kicking up a dust in the road every step we
took. Every one seems to be stirring up his own especial and
peculiar dust and adding it to every one else's especial and
peculiar dust.
We are all mentally, morally and spiritually sneezing or choking
with our own dust and the dust of other people. How is it possible
for us to get any clear, all-round view of life so long as the dust
stirring habit is on us? So far from being able to enlarge our
horizon, we can get no horizon at all, and so no perspective until
this human dust is laid.
Pages:
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195