Open That Door!

by R. Sturgis Ingersoll

What a lesson in the way of life is a lad of ten! He sees in life an opportunity, a vast opportunity for everything. No specialist is he—within the month he decides that his career shall lie in any one of a dozen, from that of the man upon the back of the ice wagon, to that of the President of the United States.

Why are the young so superior to their elders? Why, indeed, do we have to cast off our years to enter the Kingdom of Heaven? Ponce de Leon, in search of the Fountain of Youth, journeyed from Spain to the New World, and, weary of the quest, left his body to rot in the American wilderness. He need not have gone so far upon his travels, as in the point of view of the last boy whom he met before embarking from the shores of Spain there was this very Fountain which he sought. To break down all the barriers which hedge us in, to open a thousand doors entering upon undiscovered countries of ambition and delight, to forget time, to forget everything but the joy of living, to experience the thrill of carrying heavy burdens and the overcoming of obstacles, all we have to do is to see the world through the eyes of the boy of ten. It is the youth's relation to the world as he finds it that makes him superior to, and a more worthy inheritor of the Kingdom than is his father. The former's outlook is that of perpetual wonderment, of endless romance, of intensive interest, and wide horizons; the latter's too often is that of a blind man in a picture gallery. A lad lives acutely, never lets an hour "slip by," is ever willing for an assault against any battlement, and in that lies the secret of life.

Most things, to be sure, are "easier said than done," but after having found that the proper door to open is that which leads to the world of fervid expectancies, experienced by the boy, we may at least attempt to find the key that fits the lock. Perhaps you have already found it! This is a good personal test—do you feel that your mind is a-tingle with the music that is played by the world in which you live?

It has been said that you can tell a man by the company he keeps—but there are far better methods! Find out his experiences when he walks along a city street, rubbing elbows with the crowd, dodging motors at the crossings, with every step he takes passing faces, human faces, passing windows behind which are woven the webs of human happiness and grief. What are his innermost sensations? Does he feel the throbbing pulse of men and women, or is his heart and soul dead and forbidding? Or else go with him upon a walk into the country—Spring or Fall—Winter or Summer—his talk and expression will show the stuff that is in him. Is he alive to the multifarious beauties of color, life, and movement that are about him, or is he the same gnarled, twisted parody of man who, when in the office, always thinks himself imposed upon, or in his home appears a misfit, uncomfortable piece of furniture?

Yes, there is a sublime religion in the joy of jostling your fellows in the workaday streets, there is a sublime possibility of growth in the soul of him who, when upon a journey in the country, breathes a deep and lasting draught of the joyousness of life. And yet, why does this religion slip from us, why at times do we refuse to grow? Why do we lose the tingle of living which is the very essence of the boy's sense of life?

One man will tell you that he is in a rut. He has worked until his youth is passed, and there is no further chance of promotion. A second has lost his money, and he is bitter against the world that took it from him. A third misses the companions whom he used to know, and with them went the color and the value of the world. A fourth has gambled with life's good things: has wasted his body and mind in his lust for women, wine, or food, or in his greed for gold. Perhaps, although not admitted, with the satisfaction of his desires women have lost their beauty, wine and food their taste, and gold has proved tarnished metal.

What is, at bottom, the matter with them all? And what is the matter with the men and women who have had worldly success, who have had all the exterior things that life could give them, and yet feel that this Earth is an unsatisfactory sort of pasture in which to graze? Why should there be sighs of discontent when above us the sky is blue, and in the world about us children are born of women, heroic deeds are accomplished, and tragedies met and defeated by the courage and love of our human kind?

The answer is in the fact that many of us lose the blessed heritage that was part of our youth: our sense of wonderment, our breadth of sympathy. To the youth, every moment of every day meant an awakening to new things, an introduction to strange, exciting mysteries, whereas there are no such awakenings for the man who finds not the wonder in the windows bordering and the faces passing on the crowded city streets, or feels not, in the country, the subtle magic of Nature's workings.

You say the world grows stale; it is not the world grown stale that takes the lustre from life, it is your own sleepiness, the profound drunkenness of the lazy and the cold heart. It is the loss of a personal sympathy with God and man.

A loss of sympathy is a horrible thing. The loss of that sympathy which holds your heart engripped, and makes you feel part and parcel of this great, moving, turbulent, sorrowing thing we call the World, is as grievous a loss as can befall any man. It is worse than a separation from money, friends or family—it is the loss of an individual's personal stake in the world. And yet, we see men who have lost and are losing it. In them we see die that spark of life which has made them an integral part of all that lives. We see smothered the divine fire of humanity and godliness. If we consider Nature, including man, as one great spirit, we feel that those who have lost an embracing sympathy are apart from that great spirit, are drifting off into the barren deserts of bewilderment and decay. If we consider men as individual souls plotting their own destinies, we must see in those who have lost their intimate touch with the surge of their fellows' labors, and their sympathy to the power of beauty, pariahs, true outcasts, apart and alone.