Victims of Environment?

Sometimes we complain that we are victims of environment. Sometimes this is so, but not always as much as we may suppose.

It is true that environment has much to do with the decisions and actions of men, but in any environment there are choices. In any environment there are those who reach higher and those who drift lower. In any environment, good or bad, there is a choice between greater things and lesser things, between better things and worse things, and in these respects men do decide for themselves; men do determine direction.

Shakespeare said: “God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another.” In many ways we do shape ourselves by our decisions. We can choose in some degree in any environment, what we think, what we do, what we do not do, what habits we have, and to the extent that we are able, we are responsible for these choices.

When people blame something outside themselves, they are merely saying what every person could say. If we were predetermined to be certain things, or to do certain things, no one could be held accountable for anything, ever.

There are pressures in life. There always were. We are always acted upon, as we in turn act upon others. We are always influenced by others as we in turn influence others. But this does not mean that we have any reason to run through life rudderless. “Men, like rivers,” said Dr. Harvey Fletcher, “become crooked by following the line of least resistance.” Sometime or other everyone has to say, “Get thee behind me, Satan.”

Said George Eliot: “We can only choose whether we will indulge ourselves in the present moment, or whether we will renounce that, for the sake of obeying the Divine Voice within us⎯for the sake of being true to all the motives that sanctify our lives.”

This is the substance of self-control: choosing whether we will indulge ourselves in the present moment, or whether we will obey the Divine Voice within us.

Blessedly, we can change our lives for the better, if we will.