The Beginning of Things

The beginning of things is exceedingly important⎯the beginning of trends and tendencies: the beginnings of habits; of quarrels; of good or bad qualities of character; the beginnings of the symptoms of sickness.

Often we ignore the first symptoms. Often we wait until things are well underway before we think they are serious or significant. So 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. No doubt we should learn better the practice of preventive medicine.

There is a premium for preventing things from happening that shouldn’t happen. Sanitation comes under this category⎯preventing disease from getting started, rather than curing epidemics. Safety comes under this category⎯preventing accidents from 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 the beginnings of things and live as we ought to live, we could save ourselves many heartaches and spare ourselves many things that have no right or reason to get started, and we could prevent many tragic breakups among people who ought to keep close to one another.

If we would watch the symptoms in our boys and girls, the attitudes they have, the directions they tend to take, and keep close to them, we could prevent many tragic errors. (we have a right to parental intuition and to the guidance of Divine Providence in meeting the problems of young people, if we will live for it⎯and watch beginnings.)

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