For the past three or four years, things have been going pretty well at our house. We pay our bills to afford small luxuries like weekends away and dinners out, and still have something in the bank at the end of the year. So far as life is concerned, I have felt fairly well content. But there is another side to me which every now and then gets restless. It says: “What good are you anyway? Is this all there is work, sleep, shuffling from year to year?”
Of course, we contribute in small ways–a twenty in the church plate, ten to Red Cross–dribbling out money hoping to satisfy our need to be worthwhile, to create a perfectly happy life. But there isn’t much satisfaction in it. For one thing, it’s too diffused and, for another, I’m never really sure in my own mind, if this is the right thing. I am not sure I have time to find out.
A couple of years ago, I said: “I’d like to discover my perfect place in the world where I can be my best and contribute more than anywhere else.”
It was a rather thrilling idea and I went at it in the same spirit in which I investigate all my big purchases. Without bothering you with a long story, I believe I have found it.
Not everyone can benefit from this. Not everyone reading this will want to take the action needed to find their perfect place. That’s okay.
For everyone else, let me give you a little background.
Sitting in a playground, a young child shines with un-self-conscious gaiety. She falls to her knees from a missed step and a shadow passes. She jumps up, brushes off her hands and begins again to shine. She sits despondent, staring at the swing that she wants to play with, but it is still occupied. Again she gets up distracted and joyful with a new adventure.
We turn the hands of time. She is grown and then enters the age of rational responsible living. It seems that our times present new obstacles to her happiness–and yours.
Until recent times, we were deaf and dumb to the trials of others, but now they moans and complaints are audible through television, radio, YouTube, and Twitter. The millions are now saying what moody poets have always said:
“The flower that smiles today
Tomorrow dies.
All that we wish to stay
Tempts and then flies.
What is the world’s delight?
Lightning that mocks the night
Brief even as bright.”
The worker-bees of today, who are much better off than the same class of worker from centuries ago, still say what Shelley said in 1819.
“The seed ye sow, another reaps
The wealth ye find, another keeps
The robes ye weave, another wears
The arms ye forge, another bears.
The poets are by no means the only offenders. The journalists, politicians, even talk show hosts, take their turn. News deals daily with the lives of the vicious, the wretched and the dissolute; and with the most unjust and disastrous conditions of modern society. The camera’s eye is filled with a popularized opinion that highlights an immoral universe, indifferent to right and wrong.
This is a melancholy notion that really makes people miserable and only illustrates our morbid curiosity with the sudden collapse of civilizations.
Still.
A flower blooms. A baby laughs. A child hugs a grandmother. These moments pass quickly; are stored in our memories and rise up for us to remember our bliss. In spite of many old and some new discouragements, we are still seeking those perfect moments that add up to a perfect life.
What are the means and sources of this perfect life, with the storms of the present surrounding us?
The thought that we need to take hold fast of, throughout our pursuit of a perfect life is that the best way to secure future perfection is to create perfect moments today and string them together. To secure any desirable capacity for perfection in the future, near or remote, cultivate it today.