| The Every Day of Life |
Chapter 11 |
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If a man had known, for example, that after all his toil, pain, struggle, and self-denial, a certain great undertaking would fail, he would not have begun it. Yet perhaps that very labor of years, though it proved in vain at last, has been the richest blessing of his life. It drew out his soul’s energies. It developed his strength. It taught him lessons of diligence, patience, courage, and hope. It built up in him a splendid manhood. The mere earthly result of our work in this world is but means to a higher, nobler end, and is of small importance in comparison with what our work does in us. But if a man had known in advance that nothing permanent would come out of all his toil, economy, and self-denial, he would have said, I may as well have an easy time. What is the use of working like a slave for forty or fifty years, and having only weariness and emptiness of hand at last?” Not knowing, however, that his efforts would fail in the end, hoping that they would succeed, he lived earnestly, laboriously, putting his whole soul into them. His work failed, but he did not fail. There is no material result to tell men of any achievement, but there are imperishable results in the man himself, in life, in character, in manhood, – results far nobler than the noblest he could have achieved in mere material forms. It was better he did not know that all would fail, for if he had known it he would have missed all this good.
People say sometimes, in hours of great sorrow, that they wish they had never known the friend that they have now lost. The friendship was deep, rich, and tender. It absorbed the whole life. It brought sweetest joy. It filled the heart during precious years. It was faithful to the end. There was no stain upon its memory. No falseness ever marred its nobleness. But just because the friendship had been so pure, so rich, so tender, so unselfish, so satisfying, its loss at last was such an overwhelming sorrow that it seemed as if it would have been better never to have, had it at all.
Our deepest joys and our bitterest grief’s grow on the same stalk. To love always involves suffering, sooner or later, for one or other of the friends, for there must some time be separation. One must be taken and the other left. One must go on alone from a new-made grave,
“Eyes lifted to the icy north,
Hands crossed, head bowed, heart frozen numb.”
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