An article written by my father, the Rev. C. Thomas Paige, as it appeared in the Tri-State Defender on the date shown.
“WHY NOT GO OUT ON A LIMB, THE FRUIT IS OUT THERE, ISN’T IT?”
So reads a quotation on a local business on one of our main streets. Thousands of people pass this place every day and many have failed to see it. Many who have read it have gone on their way without being moved or encouraged to do something. But as I read it, it carried a poignant meaning for me. It challenges the thinking people, and no real person could read it without feeling a desire to do something. To me, this sign is saying “Why not venture out? Rewards await those people who will take a chance or move out into a realm of the unexpected.”
GRAVE TIMIDITY
We live in a day of grave timidity. Men are timid to the extent that they are too timid. There is something springing up in this generation that makes me tremble. Instead of the venturesome, exploratory spirit of days gone by, we find people who are willing to put up with anything as long as they can get by. We live in a day when too many men are looking for something behind which they can hide.
Go down any street, if you don’t believe me, and ask the first five young men you meet, “If you had a choice to marry a nice young lady who could bring you all the joys of family life and all that it embraces, or an old woman with plenty of money, which would you marry?” I dare say that three and one half of them would choose the latter. The same thing is true of our young women.
The teachings of a few generations ago produced workers and now our modern teachings are leading us to a generation of shirkers. Once again we must find that which we have lost and place it back into our pattern of teaching, that our young people may come out filled with a zeal to venture out.
THE ALSO RANS
Ever so often I hear parents saying, “I don’t want Johnny to come up as I did.” “I went without this or that.” “I did not know what real pleasure was.” Maybe not, but in the whole process of denying yourself, you learned an even greater lesson: you learned how to hold back on some things until the time was ripe for venture.
I wonder if, in the time of being deprived of these things, we were brought to the place in life where we were willing to venture out and get some things that we wanted in life. Time and time again in my life I have come in contact with young people who did not get an education because they did not have clothing like other people or spending change like other people. On the other hand, I have seen young people for whom neither of these things meant anything. They had an ultimate goal – a goal of getting an education or accomplishing an aim – and to them, this meant more than anything else in life.
In many schools we have “also rans,” people who just went to college. In life we have “also rans,” people who are just here – that’s all. There is no place in this highly competitive life of today for “also rans.” The people who are doing things worthwhile are people who are venturing out, people who are making a way out of no way, people who are willing to go out on a limb because they have reason to believe that somewhere out there, they will find fruit.
THE FRUIT IS THERE
We live in a day when in the daringness of other years is a lost art. People are too afraid of getting their feelings hurt. People are too afraid of getting hurt physically. People will not do what they know is right because they are afraid of being left out. The moral and spiritual integrity of yesterday is past and gone. Somewhere in the dim unknown a voice is crying out, “Return on, heavenly dove, return with all thy quickening power. Kindle a flame of kindred love in these cold, indifferent hearts of ours!”
The life of today demands that we go out on a limb. If life is ever going to mean anything to us, we are going to have to venture out a little further, suffer a little more, and deny ourselves a little more. Yes, why not go out on the limb? The fruit is out there, isn’t it?
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 