Watertown leader. [volume] (Watertown, Jefferson County, Wis.) 1909-1911, 1909-03-12
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DUTY AND DESIRE.

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By Henry F. Cope.
For we are his workmanship.
Eph. 80.
Almost all the lives that reach any
measure Of right self-cOnsciousness re
gard themselves as in a constant strug-
gle between the things they must do
and the things they fain would do. Sell
dom indeed does it happen that one can
find his living in the things he loves
most Of all; happy are those who may.
The rest, however, are not necessarily
justified in regarding their unwelcome
work as the foe Of their highest well
fare.
It is true that many lives are lily adj
Justed. Poets are working in brick
yards and plowmen are trying to make
poems for a living. We owe 1T to life
and to our world not less than to our
selves to discover our own aptitudes,
to cultivate our best powers in the
tasks for which we are best suited. We
have no right to drift; We ought to
summon every power we have in order
TO select a work that we can do and do
well
Even then, with each man at the
task he could do best, we would still
have the conflict between the things
we must do and those we would do.
Perhaps you have heard it said that in
the good time coming every man will
have to do only the things he would
iIyn 70 Il
be satisfied with that arrangement
Even the people who believe they were
born TO wear wings and play on harps
would soon be signing for less exalted
duties
1t would be an easy matter to say TO
all who feel the rasp and grind Of each
days dull tasks. who realize keenly the
seeming conflict between the duties
that necessity lays on us and the high
bidding Of our aspirations: Be con-
tent; life is short; heaven awaits you;
times dlsparities will be adjusted in
eternity. That leads people to take
time as Il dose for the sake of eternal
health hereafter.
None of the problems Of living are
solved by a mechanical content, by an
assumed, apathetic Indifference to the
facts that fret us. An absolutely GER
tain present will not be rightly lived
until 1t is more than a probation for a
problematic future. Folks will endure
all kinds of discomfort and even wrong
on the bleak threshold when they know
the door to warmth and cheer will soon
be opened.
The world needs those who are liv-
ing full life in the present, who are
doing their share toward making condi-
tons right here. Better the one who
is wrong in his discomfort than he who
is content with wrong If life seems
wrong to you 1t is your duty to seek
the way Of righting it. 1t is better to
make the mistake of thinking you must
mold your times than to be but dull
clay to be nodded by your times.
How then can we learn to live our
lives so that, with all this seeming con-
fict, they will be right? How can we
reconcile all the opposing necessities
and aspirations? May we find our way
into the meaning of the necessity upon
us to wear so much of ourselves away
In the greedy wheels of the worlds
great machine?
After all, could we ever dream of the
higher tasks but for the lower duties?
Could we ever fit ourselves for any
greater work but by the faithful doing
of that which seems so little? Are we
not learning the greater by means of
the less? And, beside, can we be al
ways quite sure which is the greater
and which the less?
1t may be that the plowman is really
doing a finer work than the poet, for
what is the real measure of all our
work? Is the chief executive of a rail
road system necessarily doing that
which is more sublime than the work
of some father who, for the love of lit
tie ones, bears the yoke of servitude?
Neither the wage nor the work itself is
the measure, but the worker.
Often the burdens that seem to
threaten to break us are the ones that
make us. The discipline of the dull
task is the refining pot where the gold
of life itself is produced But for their
grinding necessities lives would all be
only dull pebbles; the jewels are dis
covered by the lapidary called some
times duty and sometimes adversity.
Only as we see life in the light of
these higher values does the necessity
for the conflict between duty and de-
sire appear and the meaning of the toll
and hardship become evident. Because
man belongs TO a nobler order which is
in the making he learns not simply to
endure but to delight in the tolls of
the present, to fight circumstance. to
show himself master of his fate, and to
find the life that strikes its roots so
deep into eternity that neither parching
drought nor rising food affect its pros
perity.