I would begin with my relatives. While I might easily conceive a better set of uncles, aunts, cousins, brothers, and so on, yet Destiny gave me precisely the relatives I need. I may not want them, but I need them. So of my friends and acquaintances and fellow workmen. Every man’s life is a plan of God. Fate brings to me the very souls out of the unknown that I ought to know. If I cannot get along with them, be happy and appreciated, I could not get along with another set of my own picking. A man who is looking for ideal human beings to make up his circle of acquaintances would as well go at once and jump into the river.
The God of Things as They Ought to Be is a humbug. There is but one God, and He is the God of Things as They Are.
Half of my problem is Me; the other half is Circumstances. My task is to bring results out of the combination of the two.
Life is not a science, to be learned; it is an art, to be practised. Ability comes by doing. Wisdom comes not from others; it is a secretion of experience.
Life is not like a problem in arithmetic, to be solved by learning the rule; it is more like a puzzle of blocks, or wire rings—you just keep trying one way after another, until finally you succeed, maybe.
I think it was Josh Billings who said that in the Game of Life, as in a game of cards, we have to play the cards dealt to us; and the good player is not the one who always wins, but the one who plays a poor hand well.
III
IF I WERE TWENTY-ONE I WOULD
TAKE CARE OF MY BODY
The comfort and efficiency of my days depend fundamentally upon the condition of this physical machine I am housed in. I would look out for it as carefully as I attend to my automobile, so that it might perform its functions smoothly and with the minimum of trouble.
To this end I would note the four X’s. They are Examination, Excretion, Exercise, Excess.
Examination: I would have my body thoroughly inspected by intelligent scientists once a year. I do not believe in thinking too much about one’s health, but I believe in finding out the facts, and particularly the weaknesses, of one’s mechanism, before one proceeds to forget it.