| Making the Most of Life |
Chapter 19 |
Page 5 |
Opportunities come to all. The days of every life are full of them. But the trouble with too many of us is that we do not make anything out of them while we have them. Then next moment they are gone. One man goes through life sighing for opportunities. If only he had this or that gift, or place, or positions, he would do great things, he says; but with his means, his poor chances, his meagre privileges, his uncongenial circumstances, his limitations, he can do nothing worthy of himself. Then another man comes up close beside him, with like means, chances, circumstances, privileges, and he achieves noble results, does heroic things, wins for himself honour and renown. The secret is in the man, not in his environment. Mr. Sill puts this well in his lines:–
“This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream:
There spread a cloud of dust along a plain;
And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged
A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords
Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince’s banner
Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes.
A craven hung along the battle’s edge,
And thought, ‘Had I a sword of keener steel–
That blue blade that the king’s son bears–but this
Blunt thing.’ –He snapped and flung it from his hand,
And lowering crept away and left the field.
Then came the king’s son wounded, sore bestead,
And weaponless, and saw the broken sword,
Hilt buried in the dry and trodden sand,
And ran and snatched it, and with battle shout
Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down,
And saved a great cause that heroic day.”
With the blunt sword, broken now, which the craven had flung away as unfit for use, the princely hand won its great victory. Life is full of illustrations of this very experience. The materials of life which one man has despised and spurned as unworthy of him, as having in them no charmed secret of success, another man is for ever picking up out of the dust, and with them achieving noble and brilliant successes. Men, alert and eager, are wanted, men with heroic heart and princely hand, to see and use the opportunities that lie everywhere in the most commonplace life.
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