Living the Radiant Life. George Wharton James
Radiate your full and calm determination, without argument, to live in your own way. If a certain "style" of dress, which is structural, honest, neat, is suited to you to-day, it is suited to you to-morrow and for all time. Be yourself and wear that style regardless of the fluctuations of fashion. Why should fashion say that a man's overcoat this year shall fit him tightly and keep him warm, and next year fit him loosely and send him into the cold, through a storm, shivering and chilled? What sense, what manliness, what dignity, is there in allowing a "fashion-designer" to thus have the opportunity of ruining our health? Let us radiate our positive repudiation of such insane follies, of such sins against our bodies, and in our dress, our food, our social customs, be ourselves in a kindly, unselfish, unobtrusive manner.
Wherever fashion dictates in matters of dress, of personal custom, there you find at once a restricted and "provincial" people. For fashion compels adherence to her silly commands, hence picturesque individuality disappears. A few years ago the clever editor of the New York Journal wrote an editorial against men's wearing whiskers. One part of his argument was that the hairs were carriers of disease-germs, and that, therefore, a man with whiskers was dangerous and to be shunned. Thousands of the poor people of New York read and believed this man's preposterous screed, and were thus made unhappy and miserable, and by mental suggestion rendered more liable to the attacks of disease than they would have been had these foolish words never been penned.
It was fashion—not a care for health—that dictated those words. We Americans so love the intellectual conversation and edifying monologues of our barbers that we allow them to dictate to us whether we shall have hair on our cheeks or not, whether we shall have our necks shaved, and how much and whose "restorer" we shall put upon our hair.
I use the barber here merely as a type. He by no means stands alone.
I am determined to radiate a quiet but forceful protest against having my life or that of my fellows dictated to, in purely personal matters, by any one, whether he be priest, doctor, lawyer, barber, or editor. Let each live his own life, within reasonable bounds, and let each expect every other to be himself. In nature there are no two things alike, yet fashion would have us all alike; and, it might be added, therefore, all foolish.
In seeking for the expression of yourself do not for one moment think it is necessary for you to think out something new, original, startling, or strange. That is not the idea at all. Your life may be yours—purely individualistic, and yet everything you do and say and think and feel be as old as the hills. The idea is this. No matter where you get the thoughts from that incite you to action, make them your own; let them become a part of yourself, then your life will be yours indeed; an expression of your own soul, and not that imitation of another that Emerson so truthfully says is suicide.
But in the radiating of my own individuality I must be so filled with the true spirit of individuality that I shall in no way interfere with that of others. Too often men and women in seeking to be "individual" have seriously trespassed upon the rights, the joys, the comforts of others. This is a fundamental error. The first law of individualism is this: "What I claim for myself I thereby freely accord to all others." Note the word "thereby." In the very fact and act of claiming I thereby freely recognize to the utmost the right of every one else to claim the same right. There is no selfishness in individualism; there are no "special" privileges in its exercise. It is the habit of a few to believe that they should have "special" privileges accorded them. True individualism recognizes no such special rights. In taking we give. In claiming we avow the right of others to claim.
The trouble with mankind is that it has not learned that souls are individuals; that the diversities seen between plants, the differences that exist even between blades of grass, so that there are no two blades exactly alike, is but indicative of the individualism of the human soul. There is a family likeness, for we are all created in God's image, but God is so large, so great, so diverse, in Himself, that each soul is a different image. Hence each soul must be itself and not another. Each soul must develop in its own lines and not in those of others.
The great errors have come in when men have said: "I have found the way of life; it is the only way; all men, therefore, must walk herein." It is a very human error, yet error it certainly is. That Roman Catholicism is "the way" for many human souls no one can question, but that it is "the only way for all human souls" many millions have questioned and doubtless for ever will question. Every church, every creed, every philosophy has those for whom it is "the way," for the time being at least, and it is well that they walk therein. But in thought religion, as in everything else, progress is the law of life, not standing still. In religious thought, as in all life, let us say with our whole souls:
So welcome each rebuff
That turns earth's smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids not sit, nor stand, but go.
Onward, forward, is the cry. The law of evolution has demonstrated that there must ever be the disturbance of the equilibrium on the lower plane in order that there may be the readjustment upon the higher. Every soul that sits still and rests content is retrogressing. There must ever be a godly discontent—a reaching out, a following after, as Paul puts it, if that we may apprehend—take hold of—the things for which Christ Jesus has taken hold of us.
Every soul-field must be plowed and harrowed after each harvest. Crops do not volunteer very often, and a volunteer crop is never so good as one that is carefully prepared for; ground thoroughly nourished, plowed, drained, harrowed, rolled, seeded with the best of seed, watered, weeded, and properly harvested. Is a soul's harvest to be left to chance, while farmers take anxious thought for field-harvests, where only a few dollars' worth of produce are the outcome? Let us be wise for our own souls.
I can only radiate individuality when I am individualistic.
Is there no infallible, certain, sure way of doing things? Of learning things?
I know not what others have found, I only know for myself that there is but one way, and that is the way of personal test and experience.
Cardinal Newman, one of the greatest, simplest, purest, and sweetest minds of the last century, had to put his life's guidance into the hands of the church—the Mother Church, to him—the Roman Catholic Church. His piteous cry has voiced the cry of millions of human souls since; souls groping in the dark, seeking for light, desiring above all to know.
Lead, kindly light, amid th' encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on;
The night is dark, and I am far from home,
Lead Thou me on.
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.
It was his desire to know that led him to write the hymn.
What a profound truth Emerson said when he wrote: "A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his."
The italics are mine. Why will men rely more upon written words than upon the flashes of illuminated truth that come to their own souls? God and His truth are as much for me as for any man. There is as much truth, wisdom, knowledge in the universe for me as for all the wise and learned of all the ages. It is outside of me, waiting to come in, anxious to come in if I will allow it to do so, and yet I allow a Board of Bishops, a College of Medicine, a Bench of Judges to dictate to me as to what of God and His truth I shall receive. While it is my duty and privilege to study reverently all which these people would present to me as the truth, I want to radiate with all the power of my nature my belief that every soul must find truth for itself. There is no patent truth extractor that suits every human need. Conventional thought which professes to express "the truth" is merely man's sign-board to point out to you the way some one else has found truth. Too often, alas, it is used as a restricting bond to tell you beyond which bounds you must not go. Let no man bind you. God is over all and in all. His truth is everywhere. Seek in spirit and in truth and you will find—for yourself. But be