| The Every Day of Life |
Chapter 11 |
Page 4 |
So it is better that we do not know the end of friendship’s stories from the beginning, lest we might rob ourselves of love’s blessing and good. It is better, too, that we should not know the time of our death. If we knew it, it would take out of our life one of the strongest motives for earnest and noble living.
If a young man knew, for example, that he would live to be eighty years old, he would be strongly tempted -human nature being what it is -to live leisurely, not to be in haste to begin his life-work, to postpone important duties, even to delay his preparation of death. The fact that he does not know how long he will live, that he may die even to-morrow, that he really has but to-day, and that he must put into the swift passing hours the best that he can do, acts as a constant pressure upon him in all duty. He dare not loiter, or something will be omitted that ought to be done and the end may find him with his tasks unfinished.
If, on the other hand, a young man would die at thirty, while it would make him intensely earnest, if he were a true-hearted man and eager to crowd his brief days with noble living, it would tend to keep out of his life-plan all such things as he could not hope to finish before the end. Not knowing, however, how many years he may live, that possibly he may have till old age to work, he begins many things, which will require scores of years to complete. He does not finish them, but he starts them. He plants trees, which will bear fruit, long after he is gone to his grave.
And, after all, none of us really finish anything in our short life. We only begin things, and then leave them for others to take up and carry on. It is better, therefore, that we should work; as for the longest life, though our days are but few. Hence it is better we should not know the time we are to live. It keeps in our heart all the while the element of expectation and hope, for we may live to reach fourscore. At the same time it holds upon us perpetually the pressure of urgency and haste, for any day may be our last.
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