Will This Make Me Better?

We cite two short sentences from ancient sources, one from Publilius Syrus which says: “Take care not to begin anything of which you may repent.” The other from Juvenal: “No man ever became extremely wicked all at once.” The choice people make are sometimes earnestly considered and are sometimes exceedingly shortsighted. But life is so precious, so important, that our decisions should always be based on solid considerations. The human mind, the human soul, is marvelous, precious, productive. What it can think, what it can do, what it can become are beyond our calculation⎯so much so that it would be utterly, stupidly foolish to clutter our lives with harmful things, to clutter our minds, our opportunities, our physical functioning with anything negative, evil, or destructive of our best mental and physical and spiritual processes and potential. We ought, every one of us to be grateful to God for every day, for every hour, for every opportunity, and leave out of our lives the sordid appeals to lower thoughts, to anything habit forming or unhealthful, the appeals to things of lower level. And so when choices come, we should not be shortsighted. We should stop, look and seriously consider. And in all choices one well would ask a simple question: will this make me better? Will it make me more able, more alert? Will it make me stronger? Will it help to make me all I can become, or will it tend to impair, to degrade? Will it give me peace, quiet conscience, self respect, self control, or shame and unhappiness and an unquiet conscience. “Life . . . is all we have”⎯life with its limitless possibilities. Don’t clutter a thing so wonderful with anything unwholesome, anything that isn’t good. Avoid the sordid, the cheap, the harmful, the unhealthful, all things that then toward lower level. “No man ever became extremely wicked all at once.” “Take care not to begin anything of which you may repent.”