The Beginning of Things

The beginning of things is something we should watch—the beginning of trends and tendencies: The beginning of habits; of good of bad behavior, of character; the beginnings of the symptoms of sickness.

Sometimes we ignore the first symptoms, and wait until things are well underway before we think they are serious or significant. Often we wait until we are ill before we are willing to live in a way that would have kept our health when we had it. Too much of our lives comes under the category of trying to correct things that shouldn’t have happened—and we should learn better to practice prevention.

There is a premium for preventing things from happening that shouldn’t happen. Sanitation comes under this category—preventing accidents form happening, rather than rushing to the scene of an accident with an ambulance. Fire prevention comes under this category—keeping things from beginning to burn, rather than running in with the hose and the ax after the fire has done its damage.

Beginnings! Symptoms! If we would only watch beginnings, we could save ourselves many heartaches and spare ourselves many things that have no right or reason to get started. We could prevent many tragic breakups among people who ought to keep closer.

If we would watch the symptoms in our children, in the attitudes they have, the directions they tend to take, and keep close to them, we could prevent many tragic events later in life.

If we would watch symptoms, first showings, beginnings, we could come closer to keeping healthy, to keeping happy, to avoiding harmful habits, and not spend so much of our effort in trying to stop what never should have gotten a good start. The beginnings of things—watch beginnings!