Part 7

Moreover, youth has its own disappointments, its own griefs and sorrows to bear, often unguessed by those who are older. Did you believe that the world was all goodness, and have you suffered the shock that comes to every sensitive soul upon discovering that it is a very bad as well as a very good world? How can God be in his heaven and all right with the world, when there is so much sorrow and suffering and sin? It takes a long time to think these problems out, and their solution in full comes only with the "years that bring the philosophic mind." For some it never comes.

Have you lost faith in some one whom you trusted, and are you therefore having a struggle lest you lose all faith in human nature? Or do you distrust yourself and your own powers? While longing with passionate earnestness to be of use to the world, are you standing on the threshold of life all uncertain what place there may be for you or whether there may be any? To all these perplexities often are added religious doubts. One does not know what one may believe and wonders if one may believe anything. Many young people, in their process of adjustment to real life, pass through an experience no less serious than the going down into the "Everlasting No," described by Carlyle. Many of the interests and the beliefs of childhood are outgrown, while those of mature manhood or womanhood have not yet taken their place and the soul seems adrift. We who are older seldom appreciate either the seriousness or the sacredness of such experiences in the young. One reason why these are often so tragic is that youth lacks the perspective for judging them. There are as yet no long memories. One believes that what is now will always be. There is no remembrance of the conquest of past difficulties by which to judge the present.

So much to show that life is not all sunshine even when we are twenty! But these experiences, tragic as they seem at the time, will, if nobly lived through, bring their own compensation in truer self-knowledge and greater depth and earnestness of character. We learn from them, too, the necessity for readjustment. We learn to adapt ourselves to the real world in which we find ourselves instead of to the unreal world of our dreams.

"I slept and dreamed that life was beauty; I woke and found that life was duty."

This process of readjustment involves the reconciling of the two, the discovery that the life of duty to which we wake is at the same time the life of beauty of which we dreamed.

In this process of readjustment, the first thing to learn is that it is not necessary that we should have everything we want. Indeed, it is not necessary that we should be happy. As soon as we recognize that fact we are on the way to happiness. How many spoiled children of indulgent parents there are who do not learn this except through some unhappy experience! How many such have I watched with interest and sympathy when the idea first dawned upon their minds that, perhaps, after all, life was not going to bring them everything they demanded! Their pitifully narrow and selfish ideas must be uprooted and broad and generous ideas must take their place before even a beginning will have been made toward a fruitful life. In a world where none of us can have just what we want, where no life is ever carried out exactly as planned, and where any day may rob us of what we have cherished most, it behooves us to form early in life the habit of making the most of whatever comes our way. Of nothing is this more true than of those things we do not welcome, that seem hard and forbidding. Usually they are not what they seem, but are friends in disguise, as Browning tells us.

There are many kinds of trouble, and, of course, some kinds are harder to bear than others. Hardships and rebuffs might rank as the easiest. Loss of money or material possessions is not as serious as at first it seems. Grief is much more difficult to bear. Yet of whatever kind or degree the adversities of life, it is probable that each, as Shakespeare puts it, wears a precious jewel in its head.

There are several ways of meeting trouble. One wrong way is to regard it in a spirit of rebellion, and by constant brooding over what might have been, to allow it to embitter and spoil life. We have all known people who went through life meeting trouble in this way.

Another and a better way to meet trouble is with stoical resignation. This does undoubtedly bring strength, but it does not bring sweetness. One has not really gained the victory unless he goes further.

There is something better than to quarrel with trouble and there is something better than merely to endure it, and that is to compel it, before we are through with it, to do us good, even as Jacob wrested a blessing from the angel. It is natural to think that our troubles only restrict and limit; but we may find even in the most overwhelming disaster that which enriches life. That is the reason it so often happens that one who has known the depths of sorrow is a tower of strength upon whom others may lean, or a well of comfort and inspiration from which they may draw. Nothing has yet been discovered so good for the development of character as struggle. Deep human sympathy and the power to enter into the sorrows of others are born of suffering.

Have you not known some wealthy family whose riches suddenly took wings, to the enormous gain of every one of its members? Sons, whose lives of luxurious ease were rapidly hurrying them along the road to ruin are now forced to become self-supporting and thus acquire those manly virtues which before had been wanting. Daughters, obliged to shoulder some of the responsibilities of life and plan for others instead of for their own selfish pleasure, are made strong and womanly.

To be stricken by an incurable disease would seem to be the worst misfortune that could befall any human being. Yet, if so, why is it that invalids are so often the sunniest, most serene, most stimulating persons we know? I have chanced to be acquainted with several such in my life to whom I would go if in need of a word of encouragement or inspiration. All the disappointment in the failure of life's plans, all the suffering and pain have been transmuted into character. If, after all, the chief purpose of life is the making of character, we need not be so concerned over the means. It is for us to take the material provided, and with the means given to accomplish a worthy result. "Life is the raw material," says Goethe, "and man the artist who is to shape it into a thing of beauty."

I know a lady who lost in quick succession all her children. She might have become hard and bitter, crying out against the injustice that took her children while other happy mothers are surrounded by their little ones. Instead she became an angel of mercy to all the needy children within her reach. By her efficient work for pure-milk laws, better sanitary conditions, vacation playgrounds, and free kindergartens, she doubtless prevented many other mothers from having to mourn as she mourned. She is gentler, kindlier, more loving, more unselfish than before her great sorrow came to her, and her life is probably of much more value to the world than it would have been otherwise. She transmuted her sorrow into unselfish service. "When He hath tried me I shall come forth as gold."

Why trouble comes to us and why it comes in the forms it does, he must be a very wise person who presumes to say. One of the world-poets of old wrote a great poem upon the problem of suffering. Yet Job did not find out why God sent trouble to him, though he learned that it was not sent as a punishment. He also learned what his attitude should be toward it and in what spirit he should bear it. And for us, too, it is far more important that we should meet trouble in the right way than that we should know why it comes. Are you carrying some burden or bearing some cross that often seems too heavy? And do you sometimes feel rebellious about it and contrast your lot with that of some one who has no such cross to bear? That is unworthy of your best self, as you well know. It is for you to see to it that this trouble, whatever it may be, not only does not spoil your character and your life, but that it enriches both. It is, perhaps, the best means you will ever have to acquire certain qualities which you need and which, perhaps, you greatly admire in others. By this trial you are being tested. By the way you endure it will all your future life be determined. It is your part to become, not in spite of this burden, but because of it, a larger person than you were before.

An insight into some of the immutable laws of life helps us to endure hard things. No law is probably more steadfast than the law of compensation, as Emerson clearly shows us in his remarkable essay on that subject, an essay which should be read by every young person who is trying to formulate a philosophy of life. "For everything you miss you gain something else, and for everything you gain you lose something." When you are obliged to give up some cherished project or dear ambition, try to discover what you received in its place.

Perhaps you long to be a musician, an artist, or a scholar, and perhaps certain duties and obligations life has created for you prevent the fulfillment of this cherished dream. Then find your self-realization in those things which are permitted you. "What we need is not so much to realize the ideal as to idealize the real." Nothing so rapidly develops character in a young person as the shouldering of responsibility. While one of your friends may have been perfecting herself in music or art, or broadening herself by foreign travel, you have been carrying heavy burdens for others. Has it, therefore, been all loss to you and all gain to her? Far from it. Instead, she has gained one thing, you another. Most of us do not receive more than our share in life. You will be surprised if you look about you to discover how true this is. Apply the test to your friends and acquaintances one by one, and you will see that the advantages of each are more or less counterbalanced by the disadvantages, so that things are by no means so unjustly arranged as it would at first seem.

Another thought that may help us to adjust ourselves to the hard things in our lives is that it takes some losses, some disappointments and sorrows to make us appreciate the good things that we have. Youth is wasteful, not realizing its riches. It always remains true that what we do not realize does not exist, for us. A part of the law of compensation is that the more we lose, the more highly we prize what is left. That, perhaps, is the greatest compensation for growing older. Though the relentless years have taken away much to which we clung with tenacity, yet, somehow, we have come to place so high a valuation upon what remains that we often grow happier in spite of persistent and increasing losses. In the old story of the Sibylline Books, there is a thought of very wide application.

How little do we know which paths lead to happiness and success! We are sure, however, that we do know and rebel at the least deviation from the road we had marked out. Yet again and again a Power wiser than ourselves changes the direction of the path, and compels us to travel a different and unwelcome way. Afterward, looking back, we often realize that the best things life has brought us have come along that road of the defeat of cherished plans. These words of Emerson should be taken to heart by every young person who is having a severe struggle or who is passing through fiery trials:--

"We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. We do not know that they only go out, that archangels may come in. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character. It permits or constrains the formation of new acquaintances, and the reception of new influences that prove of the first importance to the next years; and the man or woman who would have remained a sunny garden-flower, with no room for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener is made the banyan of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide neighborhoods of men."

VII

SCHOOL SPIRIT

Among the forces which shape young men and women in our educational institutions, none is more potent than that indefinable, intangible, powerful thing we call school spirit, or college spirit, as the case may be. Students are often mistaken in the expression of it, but the spirit is right, though the expression may be wrong. School spirit always represents an unselfish attitude of the student. He has heard the call of something larger than himself.

Though school spirit may be only a sentiment, it is that which gives its deepest richness to the life of a good school. It belongs to an epoch in the life of the student that can never be repeated and never forgotten. It is the source, not only of much of the truest happiness of the precious school days, but of stimulus to high endeavor.

While there are many day schools that have a fine and strong school spirit, it reaches its height only in those schools and colleges where the students live a common corporate life, away from their homes and other influences which tend to separate them instead of unite them. Such communities foster the closeness and intimacy necessary to that complete solidarity essential for strong school spirit.

Many things operate to draw the members of a student body together. The games and sports, the fun and frolic, are shared by all. The work, if not the same, is done under the same conditions. All inherit the common school traditions and the same ideals of life are put before all. These things tend to eliminate distinctions and to make for democracy. In short, they foster school spirit.

The life of a corporate group is something different from the lives of the individuals who compose it. The members of such a group act and react upon one another. Their impulses and emotions, their words and even their deeds take different tone and shape when in the midst of numbers of others similarly circumstanced. There is a latent fire in the soul which is fanned to flame by the contact of life with life. This infection of nature by nature operates for evil as well as for good. Its harmful influence is seen at its worst in what is called mob spirit or mob rule. The mob may be guilty of deeds which not a single individual in it would countenance if left to himself.

By the mere fact of your coming together, then, surrounded by the same influences, under the spell of the same traditions and ideals, you create an element of life which did not exist before and which reacts powerfully upon every one of you. This is of the greatest importance in the growth of character, especially in these formative years. If you are ever to come to complete self-realization, you must breathe the atmosphere of pure and wholesome social influences. You should ask yourself, then, concerning the joint social life which you are living from day to day, what you are gathering from it and what you are contributing to it.

As I stood once in the chapel of Eton College, England, I noticed upon the walls certain scrolls and tablets containing hundreds of names in letters of gold. These were the names of graduates of Eton who had in after years brought distinction to their college. I noticed the same family names, recurring over and over again, and I was told that these same names are still upon the school rolls. I could not help asking myself, How can any young man who enters Eton, bearing one of these honored names, be anything but his best self? His family, his school, his country expect it. Perhaps that is one reason he so often is his best and that the same families generation after generation have so large a share of good and great men. And I thought, too, what a stimulus there must be in the very atmosphere of that splendid, five-hundred-year-old school, to spur these young men on to their highest endeavor! They were honored in being members of Eton and they in turn must honor Eton.