People--in a Personal Way

We are sometimes disposed to look upon people and their problems impersonally. In a world of so many millions of men, other people—that is other than ourselves—tend to become population per square mile, prospects for our products, customers for our shoes or our shirts, clients for our services, votes for our political parties, patrons for our performances.

But we can’t separate a man form himself, and we can’t override the fact that each man inherently has the rights and hopes and a heart and a personal potential and possibilities. There is no such thing as an impersonal person, and one of the things we can least afford to lose in our modern manner is a personal attitude towards people. The mass must not let us lose sight of the individual man. Bigness must not let us lose sight of human qualities and character. Numbers must not replace names. Statistics must not take from us a sincere individual interest in others.

These passengers who push their way with us on public conveyances; these drivers who impatiently honk horns in traffic tangles’ these who crowd to the counter, who buy things, who need things, who want things; these millions who live in the millions of homes the inside of which we never see; these who crowd the classrooms, the hospitals, the public places; and these others whom we read about remotely—all are people in a vary personal way, people with hopes and heartaches and sorrows and success.

All the eternal, individual, important personalities, all the children of the Father who is the Father of us all, who gave us life, who has plans and purposes for each of us, who has set before us the opportunities of our existence for endless progress and possibilities. The child, the boy and the girl, the mother, the mature and able man, the aged and infirm—each one is a person; and sooner all of us know that everyone else is a personal person (and the sooner we act as if we knew it), the sooner we shall have a foretaste of a heaven on earth.