On Being Better…

No doubt most of us are aware of things we should like to change in our lives, in the lives of others, and in the whole outlook of events; and often we are kept going by our faith and hope that there will come a time when things will be better.

Often we wish for a time when we ourselves shall be better, when we shall be personally improved, when our affairs will be in better order, when we shall do and be and act more as we would want to. But then we are dissatisfied with ourselves or with circumstances, or when we are not making progress along our intended path, our hope should be more than merely hope.

Sometimes we hope to have more friends, but the friends we hope to have come form being the kind of friend we wish others were. We may hope for our debts to be paid. But debts don’t dissolve themselves by our piling more debts upon them, or by leaving them as they are. We have no real reason to hope for debts to disappear or for conditions to be better if we do nothing to make them better.

Sometimes we are carried towards consequences beyond our control by uninvited events that take us where we do not choose to go. But we don’t always have to accept ourselves our circumstances outside ourselves as they are. There are many day-to-day decisions which we can in a measure make and must make which would give us more real reason to hope for a finer future.

And it should be said again that we shall not suddenly become something we are not. The building process, personal progress and improvement, and the power to do better and be better, don’t just suddenly come without effort. The only way to repent is to repent. The only way to be what we want to be is to begin to be what we ought to be. We cannot alter the trend of the past or improve upon the present simply by sitting as we are or by continuing down a wrong road.