All That Could Be Made of the "Stuff"

In a strong, short sentence Jean Paul Richter said: “I have made of myself all that could be made of the stuff.”¹ The “stuff,” of course, is all that we have and all we are: time, opportunity, talent, intelligence, and the substances of life itself. “‘The stuff’ is what we have inherited. . .,” said Mrs. Burton Chance. “But what we make of ‘the stuff’. . . that is your life work! . . . to make of yourself all that can me made . . . Though you receive life, education and friends from your parents . . . what you make of them is entirely in your own hands. . . . Think of the daily waste . . . of life”²⎯the loss of opportunity, lack of interest, “carelessness about things that count . . .” “There is nothing so insupportable to man,” said Pascal, “as to be in entire repose, without occupation, amusement, or application. Then it is that he feels his own emptiness.”³ To be durably happy we have to be doing, to be a contributing, participating part of the good that is going on. And since “time is all the stuff life is made of,”⁴ as Benjamin Franklin said it, it is the very essence of all our opportunities⎯time and what we do with it⎯what we think, what we are. “I believe that we are here to work,” said J. Reuben Clark, Jr., “and I believe that there is no escape from it. I think that we cannot get into our brain that desire too soon. Work we must if we shall succeed. There is no other way.”⁵ And so each day we ought to look with honesty at ourselves and appraise our purpose and performance, not with discouragement, not with frustration, but with honest intent, trying to live so we can say: “I have made of myself all that could be made of the ‘stuff.'” This is what each of us will be asked.