Inseparable From Ourselves…

Constantly, ceaselessly, we are keeping company with ourselves. Inseparably we live with ourselves, with our own thoughts, whether they are deep or shallow, clean or unclean, happy or unhappy⎯which suggest the great importance of learning of repenting of improving, of becoming more acceptable within ourselves.

When someone observed that a certain person did not appear to be much improved by his travels, Socrates said: “I very well believe it, for he took himself along with him.”

“We own to our first journeys,” observed Emerson, “the discovery that place is nothing. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern Fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical fact that I fled from . . . Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.” Montaigne further added “We carry our fetters along with us: . . . we must . . . regain possession of ourselves.” And Caleb Colton referred to “traveled bodies, but untraveled minds.”

The so-called broadening influences are broadening only if there is a base that can be broadened. This doesn’t only pertain to travel, but also to education, to art, to attitudes, to the learning of all the lessons of life. Not only is the impression important, but also the substance upon which the imprint is impressed. There must be character and capacity and purpose and principle, and solid substance within ourselves, and a clean and comfortable conscience, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he,” and as his soul is inside him, so shall be his most constant companion. And our endless and earnest aim always, wherever we are, should be to have a self-respecting relationship with ourselves inside.