You Are the Window…

There is a remarkable sentence from George Bernard Shaw: “Better keep yourself clean and bright,” he said. “You are the window through which you must see the world.”¹ As we move around the circle of cause and effect, it is most likely that we will see what we are looking for. If our minds are filled with mediocre things or something less, or something low, we are likely to see the lower side. If we look for faults, we find them. If we look for offenses, we find them. If we look for the sordid, for low-minded things, we find them. And the more we look, the more we find what we are looking for, and the more we may become like what we are looking for, and the more we become what we live like. Emerson said this in substance: “Be careful what you want, you might get it.”² The classic example of becoming like what we look at and admire is, of course, Hawthorne’s story of the Great Stone Face. This makes the moral climate of a community, of a home, of a school, or of a neighborhood of much importance. This makes clean surroundings of much importance. This makes the lurid advertisements and enticements to see filthy entertainment of particular concern, for very suggestive or immoral scene tends to pull young people down to lower levels⎯and older people also. But if we see the better side, we will more likely reach for the better side, be more comfortable with the better side, and become more as we should become within ourselves. You are the one who must live with yourself. You are the one with whom you must live everlastingly. You are the one who had better set high sights, because you’re much more likely to hit what you aim at, much more likely to find what you’re looking for. “Better keep yourself clean and bright. You are the window through which you must see the world.”