Eyes are given to see with now! Are you using them now? Do you gaze upon the grass, the trees, the flitting butterflies, the busy insects, the bees, the beautiful birds, the clouds, the sky, the sea, the rippling cascades, the everything of Nature, NOW, and enjoy their many-formed, many-hued, many-graced splendors.
Ears are given for hearing now!
Are yours alert for all the sweet, the pleasant, the comforting, the joyous, the sublime sounds that might come to them now? Or are you like the "fools and blind" who will sit at a Boston Symphony concert and gabble gossip or retail slander?
Palates are given to taste with now!
Are you tasting the apples, the rare lusciousness of grapes, peaches, oranges, plums, and the thousand and one delicate fruits now, or are you regretting the lost truffles, the sauces, the spices, the wines, the stimulating things of yesterday, or longing for the Lucullus repasts of to-morrow?
Oh, the content and happiness of taking joys as they come, in their simpleness and naturalness, in their every-day, common, normal order; of looking for them, expecting them, anticipating them, going out, as it were, to meet them.
Is it only a walk of ten blocks (or five) to the store, or office, or school? Are you ready as you step out of your door to inhale the fragrance of the morning air, or enjoy its own peculiar delight if the morning is wet, misty, foggy, rainy? Do you see the moving and sun-lit clouds; the clear sky, the rustling leaves of the trees; the hopping of the happy birds; the joyousness of the children walking to school?
Be alert, receptive, ready. Seize the small joy of the now, and you will find it far more delightful than all the anticipations, and even the realizations of what seem to be the large joys of the to-morrow.
One of the saddest pictures on canvas to me is one called "The Pursuit of Pleasure." It represents a female figure as Pleasure, floating through the air, and followed by an eager crowd of men and women, of all ages and conditions in life. Reaching, grasping, breathless, regardless of their tramplings upon each other, indifferent that some of their whilom companions are fallen and cannot arise, and that hopeless despair is depicted in their eyes and faces, each and all of the remaining strugglers fix their eyes upon the phantom though alluring figure. And thus the pursuit goes on continuously; there is no reaching her; she is ever illusive and evasive, a delusion and a snare, ever beckoning yet ever retreating.