Build your own Future (ePub)

As long as we live, the future is coming to pass. There it is, a promise or a specter. To one man it brings joy and the realization of his dreams-to another, tragedy.
All your life you have seen such futures happening. Years ago, some intimate of yours gave evidence of splendid possibilities. Now he is a broken man, sick and discredited. An acquaintance you believed had little promise is wealthy and revered. How did it happen?
No question is more important than this, none upon which you and I need more light. Here we are, working at our tasks, trying to save a little money, giving what love we have to our intimates, and hoping, always hoping, for a better tomorrow.
But suppose we are working, saving, struggling to no avail? We need to do something about tomorrow NOW. What if we discover, years from now, that ignorance of certain laws and the neglect of important methods compromised our efforts and left us disappointed? That is our fear.
You can't build the future in the future. You can only plan for it by constructive programs and positive actions today. There is now something for you to take, and something for you to give. Your giving may be only a courteous attention to another man's ideas, but that is something-in fact, much. When this act of giving and taking is wisely repeated you learn not only that you can produce a constantly unfolding life, but how-which is to some point.
We must be ready to meet the ever changing scene. Surely this has always been true. Does not the art of planning one's future begin with alert interest in how to overcome the obstacles of today? Tomorrow is new. New ways are necessary in the now if we are to be ready for the time to come.
Suppose, instead of living in this century, you were a primitive man trying to lift a massive stone, tearing your bleeding fingers. Suppose someone came along with a crowbar, crying "Here, I've a lever, I'll pry the rock out for you." What would you do: go on tugging, or stand back and let him use his bar?
If you saw him accomplish the task with ease would you let the man go away, leaving you to struggle with other rocks, or would you ask him how such levers work? Suppose that then, after you had learned all about this easier way of moving rocks, you discovered this stranger used other methods new to you. He could move things around on what he called "wheels." He knew how to harness a waterfall and make it work for you. He could hollow out a log so that, in it, you could travel with ease on the water. Wouldn't you become a little excited and want to find out more of what he knew?
I have been excited a good many years now over what seems to me a most amazing fact. The discovery of how to control matter, to make physical life easier, came to mankind slowly. Insight into how a like transformation may take place in a man's handling of his own life has come in one generation. Most people are not yet aware of it. Few realize what has been happening, for millions are toiling greedily and fighting bitterly everywhere. They know that science and mechanics have made over the face of the earth. They do not know that psychology and its sister sciences are making a like change for man's handling of his own nature.