| Strength and Beauty |
Chapter 23 |
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Like echoes are our lives; what they hear they reflect back to the speaker’s ear and heart. So it is that we may find out, in the way others treat us, just how we really treat them. They echo into our ears in their judgments of us the very things which our lips have spoken concerning them. Hence our judgments of others are really self revealings. If we are suspicious and distrustful of men, we are showing the world that in us are causes for suspicion and distrust. If we find selfishness wherever we go, it is evidence that we are selfish ourselves.
This truth has a wide application. A living torch and a dead ember were sent forth into the world to find out what the world was like. The torch returned and reported that there was light everywhere. The ember reported that it was dark everywhere, with not a ray of light shining.
So do men find in the world just what is in themselves? One man says it is a world of sadness. There is nothing in it but sorrow. All its songs are songs of tears. He has not found a bit of blue, nor heard a note of gladness in all his rounds. Poor man! It is only the gloom of his own heart that he is reporting. He has in him no capacity for seeing beauty or hearing joy notes. Another man goes out over precisely the same course, hearing the same sounds, and seeing the same sights, and he reports that he found only music and loveliness everywhere. The world was full of sweet songs. On every spot flowers bloomed; everywhere light was shining.
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