Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 279, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 November 1911 — Whata Do We Really Want? [ARTICLE]

Whata Do We Really Want?

News-Democrat recently asked hli struggle everywhere in progress indicate* tetag/and wlnt it desperately much. It is this that keeps the world movIng and plays the same part in society that winds and tides do in th* sea. That the wishes of people are so various and so shifting rather goes to show that they do not know what they want nor what they are struggling after. That is still further proved by the fact that when we get what we think w< are striving for it does not usually satisfy us, and we have to Infer from that that what we suppose we want most is different from what we actually want most. ■* The man who believes he would be satisfied to be worth ten thousand dollars alms at that mark by day and night till he hits It, and then discovers to fits surprise that it was not tefa thousand, but a hundred thousand that he wanted, and he starts out again in fresh pursuit of this larger game, finding a little later on that while his dollars have been Increasing his ambition has been growing still faster, and that he is just as dissatisfied with the hundred thousand when he wins it as he was With his ten thousand. And so the struggle goes on; always travelling, but never arriving. So that we revert to the question in just the form in which the editor stated it, "What do we REALLY want?” • v _. What thingfttre there which when attained do furnish us with a good degree of satisfaction? and which, 11 men did but know it, are what they are longing to secure, although going about it in a-very blind and crooked way? The deeper longing of men’s hearts are far finer than those that lie at the surface, and the dissatisfaction which men experience on attaining the trivial ends which they try for Is due to the inward clamor made by a nobler, set of wishes, but whose cry goes unattended to. Let us. therefore W down three objects which it Is the part of human instinct to desire, but which some, perhaps most, try to content with cheap satisfaction—namely, character, usefulness and the leaving behind iff a pleasant memory when we are gone. * Just as We know what a* kernel 01 corn If planted is designated to grow up into, so dossil men know what they were made to be and designed to become, viz., Intelligent in mind and noble in impulses. That idea is before us, and no one quite gets away from it. A tall man makes a dwarf uncomfortable, for it reminds him that physically he is not up to the standard.

In the same way men of large thoughts and of fine feelings and sweet sympathies are an annoyance to the foolish-minded and the coarse and sour-hearted, because they are a disagreeable reminder to them that are themselves undersized. Everyßbdy would really like to be all that he knows that he was intended to be, and it is for the purpose, in part, of drowning the cries of the better and larger natures which every man has in Mip. and of accomplishing by cheap methods what is attainable only by more difficult means, that se many throw themselves into all kinds of restless and cheap endeavors in the attempt to make counterfeit attainments answer the purpose of those that are genuine. Then, again, another idea that nc one is easily able to get away from is that he is intended to bs ot use tc somebody besides himself. Even men who are miserably selfish succeed in forgetting how despicably mean it is to be selfiah The impulse to make the world tributary to ourselves is always fought, add fought hard by .the impulse to make ourselves tributary to the world. The ideal man is not only a unit in himself but also a fraction.'of the entire world, and that is a fact that no one succeeds althogeth'er' ih rubbing out of his convictions.

Each would like to ba constituted a part of the assets of the times in which he lives, of the place where he resides. And the idea is so cleat a one, and the impulse so strong to carry out the idea into action that misers who have hoarded their meant all their live long will attempt to make good their sins of omission by s large output of testamentary charity, which really costs then nothing, but which seems to satisfy their instinctive ambition to be a public benefactor." But, in the third place, all men have thoughts which reach farthei than their lives. It is human nature to alm to be esteemed and loved by our contemporaries, and there it pain te the thought of being forgotten as s s we are gone. Even those who do not believe In the immortality of the soul have * beautiful desire to be cherished al least In the immortality of human regard. Even a monument in the graveyard Is a marble bld for post-mortem respect and affection. No one will deny |he validity of the three motives just set forth, nor will deny that they are a challenge to what to best in every soul and that if yielded to will guarantee a perfection of life that na man Is so sordid as not to admire and covet.