April 1965 — Vol. 46, No. 4 — Making the Most
of Your Life
Download
PDF version
There is no easy way to make the most of
your life. Even if you follow the Hedonists in believing that
pleasure is the only good, you have to do some work to make
the pleasure possible.
The Canadian way of life has as one of its principles the
fact of work. One is expected to contribute economically,
socially and culturally.
Having mastered the daily routine of living within this
pattern, then we add grace notes and go on to fill our lives
with personally rewarding projects. These may be in any of
six areas: aesthetic, economic, political, social, religious
and philosophical. Some persons are successful in linking
three or four in their satisfying lives.
Of what does a full life consist? First of all, it requires
that you be awake and active. It requires that you stretch
your mind muscles so as to grasp and comprehend much that
will not force itself upon you. It requires that you see and
appreciate beauty. It requires you to stand on your own feet,
measuring up to life's demands, while at the same time you
bow in awe of life's unexplained mysteries. This adds up to
seeing life steadily and seeing it whole.
Obviously then, there is more to making the most of your
life than learning the plod and punctuality books by heart.
You need to absorb their precepts into your own individuality,
tailored to your environment and your purpose in life.
Here is where mottoes and slogans, auto—suggestion
and the association of ideas, principles and standards, come
in handy. This Letter is an attempt to pull together
some of the precepts in capsule form.
As you progress from youth to adulthood you will learn to
adjust yourself to the circumstances of your new life so that
you fit into the total situation. Insofar as you adapt yourself
intelligently, you are master of your fate.
The time has come to grow up, and growing up consists in
the main of bringing random impulses under control and co—ordinating
hit—or—miss activities. The mature world, whether
business, professional or technical, has no use for youths
who enter it glorifying infantilism ... like a small
child crying "look at me!" as he jumps off a six—inch
high step.
Do not be afraid of getting wrinkles on your face in the
process of developing maturity. There is nothing less interesting
than a face on which life has written no story. In the ruins
of Pompeii the visitor sees a wall painting of Narcissus,
the young man who was so enamoured of himself that he could
not tear himself away from a pool that reflected his good
looks. He had thrown away his past, he ignored what was going
on around him, and he gave no thought to the future. A myth—maker
tells us that when Narcissus came to the end, and was being
ferried over the River Styx, the River of Death, he passed
the time gazing over the side of the boat at his reflection.
One needs a sense of proportion, and to learn to command
the self one has to live with. Mind—set, whether on self—gratification
or some other love, is a state that prevents your making the
most of your life.
About being ambitious
When you are seeking personal fulfilment, that is true ambition.
You take into account your talent, your tastes and your hopes,
the demands of the business or professional or scientific
career you want, and you move toward perfecting your ability
to meet them. It is remarkable what may be accomplished by
plain, homespun capacities governed by an indomitable purpose
and common sense.
What is your real, chief and foremost object in life? The
vocation you choose will colour your relations with the world.
The act of choosing will give you a miniature plan to stimulate
and rouse you, to urge you on to desirable action, and to
keep you from false paths.
Self—fulfilment does not always mean reaching a lofty
height of perfection. The perfection of a tree on a rocky
hillside is judged by this: in its environment of soil and
climate and molestation by men and animals, it has done all
that could be expected of it. The tree may be poverty—stricken,
hunger—pinched, tempest—tortured, and stripped of
bark, not at all an ideal tree of its species, but it has
prevailed in being the best tree possible under the circumstances.
Ambition to succeed must take account of two things as you
enter the world market—place: what have you to offer,
and what are you prepared to do to improve the quality of
what you offer? During the next thirty years you will sell
about seventy thousand hours of your time and energy. What
you get for it depends upon a constructive and determined
answer to these questions.
How constructive are you? Instead of urging their imagination
to produce a high and attainable goal, some people are content
to struggle and whine through their days with a dull resentment
of what they call their "bad breaks". They are the sort of
people who, about to be cast away on a desert island, would
select a packing—case full of light novels and cartoon
books to keep them company. The constructive person would
ask for some blank notebooks and a supply of pencils.
The best in life
A perceptive person discriminates between what the herd
approves and what he himself has set his mind upon as being
valuable. To such a person most of the pleasures which are
run after by mankind are superfluous, or even a trouble and
a burden.
Discrimination means to prefer the best. It takes account
of what may be, rather than what is. It looks for possibilities.
It has learned to scorn mediocrity and things that are shoddy
by becoming acquainted with the best. This is easy to do.
Whether your interest is in poetry, science or business, there
is available to you the opportunity to make yourself familiar
with the first—rate of all time.
Everything else in your life is relative to the thing you
choose as your measure of success, so let it be nothing small.
When you are striving for money, position, or power, you
have many competitors, but when you are developing your own
personality so as to get the most out of life you have no
outside competition. The chief good you seek is something
which is your own, not easily taken from you.
We can add very much to our happiness, said a great German
philosopher, by a timely recognition of the simple truth that
every man's chief and real existence is in his own skin and
not in other people's opinions. We need the courage to be
what we are, and to follow the course we have mapped out.
All of this presupposes activity of thought. This is different
from gathering scraps of fact or amassing technical detail.
It implies the possession of an ideal against which to measure
critically the value of things.
A good question to ask once in a while is this: "How close
am I to what I should expect to be at this stage?" It brings
your thinking to a point. It reminds you that though there
is no reason why every man cannot grasp all the happiness
of which he is capable, he has to keep reaching.
The search for happiness
Happiness is an individual thing, made up of work, interests,
friendships, the pursuit of an ideal, and health.
A man does not have to go around oozing cheerfulness in
order to be a happy man. He may be happy in depth, and that
sort of happiness, in the words of Robert Frost, the United
States poet, "Will bear some keeping still about." He is enjoying
durable satisfactions.
To get the most out of life we need to do our best work,
participate in the best sort of leisure activity, and solve
our problems in the best way. "Best" in this context means
the highest for which our talents equip us. It means more
what we put into life than what we loot out of life.
A rich full life cannot be described in terms of money,
power and prestige. It cannot be defined as winning notoriety,
for glory is only an impassioned name for what is merely our
itch to hear ourselves spoken of. John Ruskin, the nineteenth
century essayist and lecturer, insisted that to live a full
life we must have five qualities similar to those required
in good architecture: Unity, the type of divine comprehensiveness;
Repose, the type of divine permanence; Symmetry, the type
of divine justice; Moderation, the type of government by law,
and Infinity, the type of divine incomprehensibility.
There is no place for make—believe in such a life.
You are not living through the day to please others or to
put on a good show, but to meet your critical self at nightfall.
That self takes little account of what the people around you
during the day said about you. They are incompetent to judge
your compulsions and your purposes, and if your standards
are high you need pay no heed to their finicky criticisms.
One thing needed is to avoid the habit of mind in which
a man is forever looking for something against which to defend
himself, and to face your future with a positive spirit and
a confident posture. You must step resolutely from the cloistered
life of home and school into the hurly—burly of the working
world. Having given your best thought to where the step will
lead you, stride out boldly. When Caesar, with a small force
of horse and foot, reached the banks of the River Rubicon,
he halted to consider the greatness of his enterprise. Then,
having weighed the difficulties against the gains, he said
to his staff: "Let the die be cast", and led his army across
the Rubicon to become master of Rome.
What is character?
All the precepts looked at so far contribute to the building
of character. A person of character is one who hates cruelty,
despises softness, and detests those who climb on the shoulders
of others. He recognizes the dignity of duty, fairness, sympathy,
co—operation, and all the other things that make a decent
society possible. He has taste, which is the instinctive and
instant preferring of one material object to another without
any obvious reason.
These are essential to making the most of life. They imply
development of the whole man and the harmonizing of all his
parts.
To live a full life you need to score heavily on interests,
tapping your energies and your store of qualities through
a great variety of outlets. A person who is not wise enough
to seek diversity of interests leads a monotonous and thin
life, and is subject to the evils of satiety and boredom.
Look around at people who are laggards in business: are
they not people who have buried themselves in their immediate
occupations? They never give a thought to what they need to
know or do so as to ready themselves for the next stage of
advancement. They see facts singly or in twos or threes, but
their sight becomes blurred and dim when they try to grasp
in their rough proportions all the multitude of facts that
compose a future situation.
If you are "well—rounded" everything you do will be
done with enthusiasm, a sense of values, imaginative thinking,
and self—confidence.
Without enthusiasm you are living only half a life, merely
"getting by". This most dynamic of human qualities can be
pictured as the ideal descended on earth to battle with realities.
It is the whole—heartedness that carries you through
difficult tasks and routine activities.
Another word for it is "zest", defined by the dictionary
as "gusto, something that gives a relish". Having zest means
that you are so eager about living that you can hardly wait
for morning to get started again. It makes life perpetually
fascinating.
Should one of your enthusiasms run into an immovable barrier,
call your sense of values to your aid. Here is a chance to
test your standards, to put first things first, to give up
the lesser good in favour of the greater good. So long as
you have not lost the something in your life which is vital
to you, continue with your usual zest to do the important
things.
Use your imagination
Imaginative thinking is necessary if you are not to be merely
a plodder, but you must be able to dream without making dreams
your master. Imagination is not a sedative to deaden life,
but a force toward a more abundant life. It is the mind's
ability to recall past experiences and relate them to new
situations in combinations of infinite variety.
Your imagination needs limbering up once in a while. It
cannot be ignored for long periods and then called upon in
some crisis. The difference between on—going and routine
men is simply this: the successful people have kept their
imaginations at work. The flash of inspiration is important,
without doubt, but the certainty that it will occur can be
increased by enlarging the stock of ideas in your mind upon
which imagination has a chance to work. The bright idea, the
brain—storm, will come if you have been alert in observing,
persevering in examining, and constructive in thinking, looking
expectantly for a link between something present and something
not yet thought of.
Hold your mind's door open to new ideas, all kinds of them.
When a new idea enters, it may seem timid and rough hewn,
it needs to be encouraged and to have its jagged edges smoothed.
It may be only a small idea, but don't despise it. Look back
over the past year and you will find that your truly significant
ideas started in a small way, perhaps just as some new slant
on something already in your mind.
The highest, most varied and most lasting pleasures are
those of the intellect, toying with ideas and building them
into new forms such as no one has seen before.
It is said that people who give free scope to this sort
of creativity are not conformists, but their difference from
other people lies in the realm of the mind and not necessarily
of outward appearance. If a man seems out of step with his
fellows it may be because, as the social rebel Henry David
Thoreau said, "he hears a different drummer. Let him step
to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."
This is quite different from indulging in extravagances
of appearance or behaviour thought up in some joyous hour.
Being strange in your manner or clothes may make you distinguished,
but distinguished for what? To cultivate idiosyncrasies may
give the impression that you are striving to convey something.
Why not strive to be something?
Instead of working to increase their individual knowledge
and understanding so as to make the most of their lives, some
young people attend congresses and parades where they find
fault with the lack of attention they are accorded. How can
self—indulgence, self—preoccupation and exhibitionism
contribute to a full life?
This kind of behaviour is far removed from the self—confidence
of the constructive seeker after goodness in life. He knows
the difficulties but does not shrink from them; he is not
one who leans on others; he is not afraid to face facts; he
is not one who has to be pampered at every turn. Our happiness
in our endeavour to make the most of our lives depends on
what we back ourselves to be and do.
On making friends
Be fastidious in adopting new modes and new friends. They
must fit your personality and your ambition.
Everyone needs friends. Joy is empty unless it is shared
with someone. Success is valueless unless friends participate
in it. The friendless man recalls the plight of the grand
army of Napoleon entering Moscow for the first time, entering
a capital, they found none but themselves to be witnesses
of their glory.
The company you keep should be no less worthy than yourself.
It should be made up of people who make you feel the roominess
of life. Even if you feel more at ease with third—raters,
you must not repose there: people of a higher intellectual
order must be your companions if you are to fulfil your potentiality.
This is not to say that you must be a climber, a detestable
sort of person, but you need to protect your good name and
your future against the disrepute of bad or inferior company.
And when you have made friends of whose affection and devotion
you can be sure, take Shakespeare's advice to heart: "Grapple
them to thy soul with hoops of steel."
The strenuous life
The person in search of a satisfying life does not ask for
comfort, but for an opportunity to exercise his abilities.
Not everyone is born with a longing for strenuous discomfort
in remote places, but everyone who is trying to accomplish
something knows that you cannot make the most of your life
if you try to exist as a non—participating unit in the
life around you.
Indolence is a distressing state. We must be doing something
to be happy. Effort and struggle with difficulties are as
natural to a man as grubbing in the ground is to a gopher.
To have all his wants gratified is intolerable. It is a denial
of the abundant life.
We recall the address by Theodore Roosevelt in the closing
year of the nineteenth century. It was called "The Strenuous
Life", and even then, when the affluent century had not yet
dawned, it was derided. Now, after sixty years, it seems to
thoughtful people that a return is needed to Roosevelt's principles
if we are to make life rewarding. A life of ease, lived by
those who are slow in thought and sluggish in action, is shabby
and worthless.
Roosevelt summed up his principles in this way: "I wish
to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease but the doctrine
of the strenuous life; the life of toil and effort; of labour
and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes
not to the man who desires mere easy peace but to the man
who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter
toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph."
Absorption in ease or passing pleasure is one of the most
common signs of present or impending decay. There is a phrase:
"To rest on your laurels", meaning to quit trying after winning
a crown or a gold medal or a promotion. A prize does nothing
else but reward past achievement. To abandon ambition upon
reaching a plateau is to suffer diminution of our essential
manhood.
"Comfort," said Kahlil Gibran, the Lebanese poet, "is a
stealthy thing that enters the house as a guest, and then
becomes a host, and then a master." We should be alert to
unmask its nature before we learn to love it too greatly.
Don't sit down too soon
The problems accompanying success are more agreeable than
those contingent upon failure, but they are no less challenging.
To handle any sort of problem successfully, we need to weigh
possibilities, discard details that are irrelevant, divine
the general rules according to which events occur, and test
our decision by experiment.
You can't treat all facts as being of equal value. Some
have validity in your circumstances, and some have not. The
problem must be tidied up and its dimensions learned. Get
inside it and feel its contours. This approach avoids rushing
toward an answer and then retracing your steps to check. By
working more deliberately, marshalling facts and resources,
you move with an air of certainty.
Do not be easily discouraged in your search for a satisfying
life. Some people sit down too soon. They remind us of the
Lotus Eaters, people told about in Homer's Odyssey,
who lay lazily on their beach eating a fruit which caused
them to lose all interest in work and all desire to reach
their native country. The worst thing in life is not to fail,
but not to try to succeed; to live in the gray twilight that
knows neither brightness nor shadow, neither victory nor defeat.
You may not always be able to play the game gleefully; you
may, indeed, be glad to think sometimes that because an unhappiness
has not befallen you that is your happiness. Like Robert Louis
Stevenson, writer of remarkable poetry and still—living
prose, you may rise above self—pity. He was so frail
in health that he had to leave the home he loved and go into
far countries: and he wrote an essay called "On the Enjoyment
of Unpleasant Places".
Let your preparations for making the most of your life be
suitable to your hopes and the greatness of your enterprise.
Of this be sure, there is no free pass that will admit you
to a full life. But if the effort you make appears to be tedious
or irksome, recall your purpose and your quest, then the vexations
of daily life will seem trivial.
These are some parts of a well—rounded life, but so
dismembered life loses its attractiveness and its joy. You
will not find your desired life in shrivelled abstractness
and formally stated precepts, but you will find it clothed
in the living form of your own personality when all these
principles are made part of you.
Then, every day, you can look forward to tomorrow with calmness
and anticipation, because you have lived fully today.
Published by RBC Financial Group. All editions from the RBC
Letter collection are available on our web site at www.rbc.com/responsibility/letter.
Our e-mail address is: rbcletter@rbc.com.
Publié aussi en francais.
[ Return to RBC Letter
home page ]
|
