Never Make Life Smaller

We have talked before of the fact that there is no way of endangering ourselves, or doing what we shouldn’t do, without its having its effect on others. Parents and children, brothers and sisters, and others also, share in some degree in all our successes or sorrows.
This suggests a further side of the same subject: as to why people sometimes seem to feel that they have a right to ruin their own lives, a right to impair their own powers, on the assumption that it is their life to live, and that what they do shouldn’t concern anyone else.
But everything, in fact, sooner or later does concern someone else. When anyone ignores the laws of health, for example, and becomes ill, others have to care for him. When anyone flaunts or forgets the laws of safety and is injured, others have to care for him. No one can hurt himself without hurting others also. What affects us does affect others.
Furthermore, we have received so much from others, present and past, that we in turn have an obligation to work, to produce, to contribute to the health, to the happiness, to the enrichment of the world. And if we acquire habits, or do those things, or take unto ourselves that which would impair our own output, that which would impair our own capacity, we are somehow robbing ourselves and others also, for the world is the product of what everyone has done or made or added to it⎯or taken from it⎯plus all that the Lord God has given.
It is sobering to consider how much of the time and effort and teaching and thinking and working of others has gone into the making of each of us, including our environment and opportunities. And while we may have the freedom to abuse ourselves, to ruin our own lives, we do not have the moral right to ruin them.
A thoughtful teacher thus pleaded with his pupils: “Never make life smaller” ⎯not in any dimension. Don’t destroy, but contribute. Don’t impair your own powers, or impair the powers or property or possibilities of others.
Remember the parable of the talents: It isn’t enough just to hold on to what we have⎯or just to let habits keep their hold on us⎯or to let life become less. We have an obligation to do, to develop, to work, to produce, to think, to repent, to improve.
We owe other men an honest effort, even if only for the privilege of living among them (even if only for the blessing of not being left in loneliness).
We shall all be judged by what we do or fail to do with our time and our talents and with all that is ours. And we owe ourselves and all others, and the Lord God who gave us life, an obligation to improve ourselves and our environment⎯ and others also⎯ and never let life become less.