We had our eyes fixed on the Goal—it might better have been the
Gaol.
It was a very absurd thing for us to fix our eyes on the Goal. It strained our vision and took our attention from our work.
To think of the Goal is to travel the distance over and over in your mind and dwell on how awfully far off it is. We have so little mind —doing business on such a small capital of intellect—that to wear it threadbare looking for a far-off thing is to get hopelessly stranded in Siegel, Cooper and Company's.
Siegel, Cooper and Company's is all right, too, but the point is this—it wasn't the Goal!
A goodly dash of indifference is a requisite in the formula for doing a great work.
Nobody knows what the Goal is—we are sailing under sealed orders. Do your work today, doing it the best you can, and live one day at a time. The man that does this is conserving his God-given energy, and not spinning it out into tenuous spider-threads that Fate will probably brush away.
To do your work well today is the surest preparation for something better tomorrow—the past is gone, the future we can not reach, the present only is ours. Each day's work is a preparation for the next.
Live in the present—the Day is here, the time is Now.
Edwin A. Abbey seems to be the perfect type of man, who by doing all his work well, with no vaulting ambitions, has placed himself right in the line of evolution. He is evolving into something better, stronger and nobler all the time. That is the only thing worth praying for—to be in the line of evolution.