The trouble with many youths is they start out with no definite plan, no one unwavering aim, for success, no worth while goal in view. They just look for a job. It may fit them or it may not, and they plod along, doing their work indifferently, with no spirit or ambition to push them towards the heights.
© Underwood & Underwood
JOHN MUIR
It is astonishing how many people there are who have no definite aim or ambition, but just exist from one day to another with no well-defined life plan. Although the great world war has done much to bring our youth to a realization of their responsibilities and raised their ideals to a lofty height we still see all about us on the ocean of life young men and women aimlessly drifting without rudder or port, throwing away time, without serious purpose or method in anything they do. They simply drift with the tide. If you ask one of them what he is going to do, what his ambition is, he will tell you he does not exactly know yet what he will do. He is simply waiting for a chance to take up something.
“Between the great things that we cannot do and the small things we will not do, the danger is that we shall do nothing,” says Adolphe Monod.
It is not enough for success to have ability, education, health. Hundreds of thousands have all these and still fail, or live in mediocrity, because they do not put themselves in an attitude or condition for achievement. Their ability is placed at a disadvantage by the lack of a big motive, the stimulus of a worthy ambition.
“The important things in life is to have a great aim and to possess the aptitude and perseverance to attain it,” says Goethe.
Of course, many people are hindered in the race through no fault of their own, but the vast majority of those who cease to climb and give up (often right in sight of their goal), do so from some weakness or defect. Many of them lack continuity of purpose or persistency; others lack courage or determination. Many of these unfortunates would attain to at least something of real success by merely sticking to their tasks.
If the motive is big enough the ability to match it is usually forthcoming. There is not one of you, my friends, who could not be more alert, more original, more ingenious, more resourceful, more careful, more thorough, more level-headed; not one of you who could not use a little better judgment a little more forethought, a little more discrimination, if you saw a tempting prize ahead of you as a reward.