How to Eat, Thomas Clark Hinkle [the chimp paradox TXT] 📗

When you were a child no doubt you had many happy days. Some of us had a very happy childhood, while others may have been denied what their hearts desired. But if we did not have a happy childhood that is all the more reason why we should be glad to help some other little ones have a happy one. More and more each year I live I come to believe that it depends entirely upon grown people whether in this world children are happy or not happy.

If you had a happy childhood—and most people had—do you not recall the glorious times you had? I know you do, for we all do. And I know, too, how much people affected with nerves dwell on those memories, and how much they wish they might go back to those blessed days when the sun was always shining and the birds were always singing and the streams always beckoning them to play along their sands.

Do you realize that you can live in those days again? I do, and I go back and dwell in them more and more the older I get. I do not mean that I am not looking forward, for I am, tremendously.

How stupid we poor miserable creatures of this world become after we leave our childhood days behind us! We really should never lose sight of them. I have said that the person afflicted with "nerves" should not run. I did not quite mean all that implies. After such a man has recovered, if he has a good heart, he should run a little. I run; I can't help it. I feel so good I have to run a little now and then to work off steam. But you know very well when most people see a man running they at once think a house is afire somewhere.

It is almost unbelievable that we should actually surround ourselves with so many utterly senseless customs that tend to nothing but misery and unhappiness. We should dress for comfort, and we should have the courage to live in a youthful world where all may be happy. "If the blind lead the blind," so the Bible tells us, "both shall fall into the ditch." We need so to live and act that we shall not fail to be happy. Happiness really is what everybody is chasing, but how very far away from it most people are getting! Go back to the memories of your childhood. Be with children and play with them all you possibly can. If you are a mother, begin this very day to exercise more patience with your children, recalling over and over again that when you were a child you were just as they are. And remember, for it is only too true, that the day is fast coming when your little boy will no longer be a little boy, he will be a man, and will have gone away from you. Then many times you will wish him back, and you will look back on those days when you thought your nerves were being ruined, and feel a great swelling in your breast, and breathing a sigh, whisper to yourself, "Dear God, I hope I did all I ought to have done for him while he was little."

I know that any one can live with children and find happiness in being one with them, and I know of no better thing to do. After we have hold of ourselves with a firm grip we should endeavor to do this.

I have had people suffering with "nerves" tell me they had lost a little boy or a little girl, and that it seems impossible to get over this loss. I cannot tell you how much I long to help such people. But I always urge them to go right on playing with other children and to remember, for to me it is certain truth, that they will meet that little child again. There should be nothing to grieve about in such a loss. To find compensation, the one who has had such a grief has only to keep on playing the part of a true man or true woman. Childhood with all its pains and pleasures is everywhere about us. And childhood is only the beginning of immortality.

Late one night, a number of years ago, I was sitting in a little restaurant in a western town, and was feeling very lonely and miserable. Sorrow weighed heavily upon me that night and the world never seemed blacker, yet I think my belief in the immortality of the soul had never been more certain. I looked up and high on the smoke-stained wall hung a painted picture of an old-time ship with many sails set. This painting pictured the ship sailing through the darkness of night. But through the dark, seemingly restless clouds the moon gleamed brightly on the white canvas of the sails.

I had never before been so powerfully impressed by any picture. It seemed fairly to speak to me. I took an envelope from my pocket and set down the verses given here. These verses were afterwards published in one or two metropolitan papers. Mr. James Bryce, then English Ambassador at Washington, saw them and wrote me a beautiful letter about them, in which he said, "Your little poem 'The Last Journey' attracts me very much." You see he was beginning to grow old, and I knew that was the reason these lines of mine had made an appeal to him.

Not very long after this I also had a letter about the verses from Dr. Osler, then Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford. In it he said, "I have read your little poem 'The Last Journey' with unusual interest." And again I knew why. You see, it does not matter very much what our rank or our station here, no matter whether a human being is a king or what his station in life may be, he still is a human being. We are all reaching out after the same great thing. The fine thing about the sentiment of these little verses is that although you wish to and may not believe it, it is coming true anyway.