Why Not Now?

“Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll!” This is more than a line of finely phrased poetry. It suggests we must not be indifferent, or resigned, or smugly satisfied with ourselves.

“I fear the contented man,” said an eminent author. “I fear him because there is no progress unless there is discontent….”

“A cobweb is as good as the mightiest cable when there is no strain on it,” said Henry Ward Beecher. This would imply that we could all live in tranquillity and peace if we had no problems. But we all have problems, and cobwebs can’t carry them. We all need to develop the strength, the character, to meet life and adjust ourselves to its difficulties⎯and also to its opportunities.

Another line, from Robert Louis Stevenson, ties in with this same thought and theme. “You cannot run away from a weakness,” he said. “You must sometime fight it out or perish, and if that be so, why not now and where you stand?” All of this suggests the wisdom of resolving to change what should and can be changed, to improve what should and can be improved, to begin what should and can be begun; standing firm, facing facts, and learning to live with them and with ourselves. “You cannot run away from a weakness.”
It comes to a question of whether or not we are in control of ourselves or whether something else is in control of us. All of us at times lean on other, but we must also learn to lean on ourselves.

To summarize, these are significant sentences: The past is to learn from, not to live in. “I fear the superficially contented man.” “You cannot run away from a weakness. You must sometime fight it out or perish, and if that be so, why not now and where you stand?”