Arizona republican., 1910-12-09
MY LIFE MY OWN

My life is my own to do with it what I will. and I'm going to do what I please"
 How often that thought sits through our minds. and sometimes. half unconsciously. finds expression in our words and our actions Let us see. Is any ones life really l their own to do with as they please2 Have any of us a right to selfishly | frame our habits and our thoughts to suit only ourselves. and can we do this even if We desire? No. For every life touches the rim of some other life. Therefore. the greatest fallacy of which We can be come possessed is that life is a thing of selfish individuality. that it is a personal possession. and because it is, no one has a right to make any claim upon even the smallest portion of it
 Ones life. ones career. or whatever else one may choose to call it. Is not an individual possession As long as we live others have certain claims upon us. First comes those in the
 
 the community and the neighborhood, and, finally. our time and our gener- ation. For every person who comes within the circle of our acquaintance is influenced by us-by the habits of our lives and our thoughts.
 Why, even before we came into the world We were exerting an influence Our lives were then predestined not to be our own to do with as we pleased. From the day we were born We have been exerting an influence Until the moment our souls leave their tenements of clay, and long after. we shall still be exerting an influence.
 Then how can We live to ourselves and for ourselves? How can our lives be ours to do with as we please? Ours to make glorious or hideous as we please?
 If things were so ordered that any one of us stood the last individual on earth with our destiny still to work out we might claim absolute possession of our lives. We might live as we pleased without thought or hindrance from any quarter
 n in to let in a prisoner it admits a man or woman who had been obsessed with the falIacy that life Is a thing apart, that it is an individual possession to be used as one pleases. The moment, however. the prison door clicks behind them. shutting out hope and freedom and life itself. they realize that they have been chasing an ignis fatuus that hung over a moral morass of murky de- spair.
 Just the moment we begin to in fluence other lives we cease to be- long to ourselves. As individuals in a world of individuals we may not count for much The tiny grain of sand on the beach does not count for much compared with the sand dune. yet it is an essential part of the beach. for it has a personal rela- tionship to every other of the myriad grains dashed or caressed by the waves of the sea.
 Just so with the individual. He may not amount to much. His com mercial value may not be great Weighed in the scales of human val ues he may be lacking. but however humble he may be. he has certain inalienable relationship to all other human beings.
 Having once come to realize this principle of life, We begin to become of value to others. Not being abso- I lute entities as far as our respon sibility to others is concerned We can determine to make ourselves as biz influences as possible in the world to stand for something of value in i the world-to become real men and women.
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