| The Beauty of Self Control |
Chapter 20 |
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So it is in all our personal experiences. Life is a kaleidoscope; every moment the view changes. The beautiful things of one glance are missing at the next, while new things – just as lovely, though not the same – appear in their place. The joys we had yesterday we do not have today, though our hearts may be quite as happy now, with gladness just as pure and deep. In a sense, to most of us, life is routine, an endless repetition – the same tasks, the same duties, the same cares, day after day, year after year; yet in this routine there is constant change.
We meet new people, we read new books, we see new pictures, we learn new facts, while at the same time many of the old familiar things are continually dropping out of our lives. The face we saw yesterday we miss today, and there are new faces in the throng; the songs we sang last year we do not sing this year; the books we used to read with zest we do not care for any longer; the pleasures that once delighted us have no more charm for us; the toys that meant so much to childhood and were so real have no fascination whatever for manhood and womanhood; the happy days of youth, with their sports and games, their schools and studies, their friendships and visions, are left behind, though never forgotten, as we pass on into actual life with its harder tasks, its rougher paths, its heavier burdens, its deeper studies, its sterner realities. So we are ever coming to the end of old things and to the beginning of new things. We keep nothing long.
This is true of our friendships. Our hearts are made to love and cling. Very early the little child begins to tie itself to others’ lives by the subtle cords of affection. All through life we go on gathering friends and binding them to us by cords of varying strength, sometimes light as a gossamer thread and as easily broken, sometimes strong as life itself – the very knitting of soul to soul. Yet our friendships are ever changing. Some of them we outgrow and leave behind as we pass from childhood and youth to maturity; some of them have only an external attachment, and easily fall off and are scarcely missed and leave no scar.
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