Taking the Place of Other People

When someone has succeeded someone else in some place or position, people sometimes make it unreasonably difficult by expecting him to do just as his predecessor has done. We may in a measure perform the functions of someone else. We may take over an office that someone else has had. We may acquire the titles and the tenure or sit in the chair that someone else has occupied. We may win the affection of people who have lost someone they love. But literally no man ever completely takes the place of anyone else, nor must we expect anyone to. It is quite natural that we should make comparisons among people. But sometimes we may want to make others over unreasonably, as we find ourselves wishing that one person were more like another person in some things and less like him in others. Sometimes even with our own children we wonder why one is so different from another. And we may expect the second son to follow the pace of the first son. But it is unfair to expect anyone to be anything but himself. We may fairly expect people to improve. We may fairly expect them to perform earnestly and honestly. We may fairly expect them to be teachable and to consider good counsel and to accept sound principles. But it is unfair to expect anyone else to live exactly as we would approach them. Men are very much themselves. Different people are equipped to do different things. And we do a grave injustice when we expect anyone to do identically as someone else has done, or when we expect anyone to perform precisely as his predecessor performed, or when we expect anyone completely to take the place of anyone else. All men have their individual eternal identity, distinct from all other men. And in the use of their free agency all men have in some respects become different from all others. And, as one wise observer has said, we must “let every man sing his own song in life,” according to the gifts and powers which the Lord God has given him. We must let every man make his own contribution to his own time and generation: “Let every man sing his own song in life.”