Learning to Let Go: Selection

LEARNING TO LET GO.

' A great art is this, —the art of letting that go which is not worth while. In athletic contests, the runners strip themselves of everything that hinders in any way the freedom of their move- ments or retards their speed. In starting out upon life's race, the first thing necessary to success is to let everything go which hampers, or which may interfere with the possibility of reaching the goal. At the outset, it is important to choose a career which will develop the highest and noblest faculties, which will call into action the best and most unselfish attributes of our being. We should cut off all useless twigs, all mere shoots, everything which would sap the nourishment that should go to the development of the best that is within us. Of all the useless branches which sap our suecess-tree, selfish- ness is the most harmful, and the most difficult to prune. Yet, if we do not cut it off early in life, it will grow like a mushroom. Like Jonah's gourd, it will spring into monstrous life, and absorb all the vital force which should go to develop our nobler qualities. Nothing else so mars the beauty of a young life as the crop- ping out, here and there, of shoots of selfishness, which, if not diligently pruned, will, in time, overshadow the whole life-tree, cut off the sunlight, and render it impossible for it to grow to its full height. Success.