The Pulpit Speaks: March 10, 1956

An article written by my father, the Rev. C. Thomas Paige, as it appeared in the Tri-State Defender on the date shown.

People are prone to rationalize!

Time and time after something has happened a commentator always comes along with the correct solution to the problem. Inevitably, he starts off like this: “You know, if this had been here and that had been there and if blank and blank had been true, it never would have happened.” This post-mortem always leads us to the correct solution to the problem. We always think in terms of what might have been or what might have happened.

NOT THE ONLY ONE

A few days ago I saw a lady who was, in all means of evaluation, a young person. Her face had scars evidently placed there by a knife or a razor, her front teeth were missing, her voice was distorted by the use of alcoholic beverages and cigarettes, and from all outward appearances, she had lost all desire to be anybody.

But let me hasten to say she is not the only person I see like that. I see may people daily who, for some reason or another, have lost their sense “of wanting to be.” Somewhere, life for them has become a distorted thing. The very thing that would make people “want to be somebody” is missing.

I think, or I am led to believe, that that is characteristic of our day and time. Too few adults and children actually want to be anything or anybody – until it is too late. Then when the age of productivity has passed and they look around and see other people who started off with them going up the ladder of success, they suddenly stop and realize what might have been.

I have said on many occasions and to some of my readers it might seem bitterly cold but to me it is true nonetheless: in the final analysis, a man (woman) is what he (she) wanted to be. Only that – and nothing more!

ONE OF HIS VICTIMS

There is little or no reason for a post-mortem. No one needs to stand around and cry out what could happen “if.” The “ifs” of life are placed there by us. We must come to grips with the fact that life, in the final analysis, is a positive thing. No one can live life on a negative plane and expect to get anywhere. We may go on for a while but that negativeness has a peculiar way of catching up with us and, many times, it catches up with us when we can least afford it.

I have seen men who have boasted over their ability to gamble and win, or exploit and never be detected, or commit numerous other offenses contrary to abundant living, and, for a season, getting away with it. But later up the road, when that same person needs a friend, the first person who comes along is one of his victims. This victim now has a chance to retaliate and that is just what he does.

COULD HAVE HELPED

Now back to this young lady I saw last week. In all probability, she could have lived a far better life than she did. She could have been a noble example for someone to see life as he had never seen it before. That voice that is now torn to pieces, that face that is now bruised because of one fight after another, and that body that has become distorted and eternally ruined, could have been a mouthpiece for right and righteousness.

Some curious mind might say, “Well, why is he writing all of that trash?”

Just for this reason: I see too many people who fall into two categories, one group bent on getting all it can out of life without putting anything in, and another group at the end of the line who now, in the gray sunset of life, constantly say to themselves “If I had my life to live over.”

Those old warriors will soon enter into that land of no return, where they must carry their wrong decisions, their bad choices, their warped ideas, and all that they have accumulated through life and there give an account.

On the other end of the line there is that group of young people who are now surveying life. To many of them, life is a series of opportunities, a great ocean with many pathways, an unconquered world that bids them welcome. It is to this group that I address this article. And may I say in conclusion, life at its very best will find most of us ending up with out shortcomings. When we reach that land where we find ourselves too old, too weak, and too mentally circumscribed to do anything, only one look at the past will reveal to us that we have failed to live up. So as the poet of old speaks to us today, let us listen:

Let us then be up and doing, with a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing, learn to labor and to wait!