The Easy Way Out

“Time was when the Will to Effort was systematically cultivated in homes and schools, on farms, in stores and factories.  Mean and women were trained routinely to expect of life a great deal of effort and a small fraction only of comfort.  In the process, they developed a rugged disposition which means:  the Will to Bear Discomfort.  Unfortunately, the accent is today on comfort, on fun and entertainment, on making things easy and pleasant.

With the Will to Comfort scoring heavily over the Will to Effort, people are no longer prepared to endure strain and anxieties and suffering.  And when suffering strikes, especially the excruciating suffering of nervous ailments, they expect the cure to be effected with the proverbial ease of child’s play and perhaps in as brief a space of time as the average game may last.   This means plaing with the illness and converting the business of getting well into a game of trying to secure effortless comfort.”

from Mental Health Through Will-Training by Dr. Abraham A. Low

“Life is not what we live; it is what we imagine we are living,” said a note Prado’s book.

from Pascal Mercier’s Night Train to Lisbon.

Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation

Washington, DC, October 3, 1863

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well as the iron and coal as of our precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the imposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purpose, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this 3d day of October, A.D. 1863, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.

Abraham Lincoln

By the President:
William H. Seward,
Secretary of State.

Think before you speak. Even a seemingly innocent comment has the potential to cause great harm.

About Self-Help

“One who is incarcerated cannot free himself from jail” (Brachos 5b).

Quote of the Day

“It is never to late to be what you might have been.”