Always Something to Decide

“Each of us has to render a decision,” said David Starr Jordan, “to say yes or no a hundred times when our grandfathers were called upon a single time.” There are more choices, more variety of offerings than once there were. There is always something to decide: what to be, what to do⎯how to meet temptation; how to use time. Always we come back to the question of choice, of standards. And one of the greatest lessons that youth could learn is the lesson of personal responsibility. “A man is already of consequence in the world when it is know that he can be relied on,” said Samuel Smiles, “that when he says he knows a thing, he does know it⎯that when he says he will do a thing, he can do, and does it . . . Not a day passes without its discipline, whether for good of for evil. There is no act, however trivial, but has its train of consequence,

. . .” “The difficulty in life is the choice,” as George Moore said it. And the most important decisions are decisions of principle: what is good and what isn’t good, what is right and what isn’t right; whether to take or not to take what isn’t ours; whether to account or not to account for all that is entrusted to us; whether to use or not to use what is of isn’t good; whether to work honestly, whether to live faithfully to family, to marital vows. One cannot avoid decision. One must decide something. And the vital thing is facing the facts, and not consider impossible anything that ought to be done, and not consider as right anything that shouldn’t be done. “If a thing is right it can be done; if wrong, it can be done without.” In other words, don’t flirt and dabble on the edge of wrongdoing. “If a thing is right it can be done; if wrong, it can be done without.” This is a good place to begin in considering all decisions.