--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Jordan, William George collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 13 number: 9 published: 1910-07 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'William George Jordan, "The Crown of Individuality—IX. The Inspiration of Possibilities," *Improvement Era* 13, no. 9 (July 1910): 793–796.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1309unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera1309unse start_page: 793 end_page: 796 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1910-07) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1309unse publication_year: 1910 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1910, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # The Crown of Individuality—IX. The Inspiration of Possibilities The Crown of Individuality.* BY WILLIAM GEORGE JORDAN. IX. — The Inspiration of Possibilities. The world needs the clarion call of a great inspiration on the unmeasured possibilities of the individual. No man that ever lived exhausted his possibilities. The greatest that ever shed the glory of their presence on this earth of ours have given but at most a few-sided showing of the lines upon which they concentrated. None ever lived the full, rounded, perfect flowering of his whole nature, the vastness of his possibility remained in the silence and secrecy of the unexpressed. Life is too short for the full story. The feeling of the incompleteness of this life, its unsatisfiedness, is a strong base of belief — in immortality. Let us throw overboard that benumbing philosophy of the words, "Remember your limitations," and preach ever: "Remember your limitless possibilities." With the new dignity added to the individual life comes a finer realization of the power of maximum living from day to day, a large, firmer grip on individual problems. There will be a revelation that must tend to kill shams and pretense. There will be a truer attunement with the highest real things in life. There will not be the folly — the disheartening "limitation" adage so fears— of people attempting to succeed at once in lines where only genius or years of concentrated effort can hope to achieve. Man is not put into the world as a music-box mechanically set * From The Crown of Individuality. Copyright, 1909, by Fleming H. Revell Company. 794 IMPROVEMENT ERA. with a certain fixed number of tunes, but as a violin with infinite possibilities. This music no one can bring forth but the individual himself. He is placed into life not a finality, but a beginning; not a manufactured article, but raw material; not a statue, but an unhewn stone ready alike for the firm chisel of defined purpose or the subtle attrition of circumstances and conditions. It is only what a man makes of himself that really counts. He must disinfect his mind from that weakening thought that he has an absolutely predetermined capacity like a freight car with its weight and tonnage painted on the side. He is growing, expansive, unlimited, self-adjusting to increased responsibility, progressively able for large duties and higher possibilities as he realizes them and lives up to them. Man should feel this sense of the limitless— physically, mentally, morally, spiritually. Newspaper and magazine stories of men who come to this country with seventy-six cents and now own thirty million dollars and head a trust, tell the financial side of possibility. It is here deemed unnecessary to give new appetizers for a national hunger— so well developed. From the physical side man may realize as a removed "limitation" that some of the strongest, most healthy and athletic men were weaklings in childhood and even young manhood. They made themselves anew by exercise, outdoor life, sunshine, simple food and adherence to the laws of health which constitute the common sense of nature. There is no loss of any of the senses nor of limbs that has proved a handicap fatal to the success of those great ones who had cultivated a fine contempt for obstacles that dared to daunt them. The possibilities of mental development stand vindicated in the splendid roster of the great ones of the world who with the smallest opportunities of education, fought their way to the ranks of great thinkers, men of rare individuality, and real leaders in the world's advance guard to the higher things. Never were books so cheap or so accessible as today, and but a trifle of time consecrated daily to this development would work wonders for him who not merely wishes and wants but wills to realize possibilities. No one in life occupies a position so humble, be it in the THE CROWN OF INDIVIDUALITY. 795 smallest hamlet or the largest city, that he cannot manifest his moral strength and exercise it. There is n:>ne so obscure that he cannot make the lives of those around him marvelously changed, brightened and inspired if he would merely progressively live up to his expanding possibilities in the way of kindness, thoughtfulness, cheer, good-will, influence and optimism. Better far is it for the individual to be a live coal, radiating light and heat for a day, than to be an icicle for a century. It is better to be an oasis of freshness and inspiration, if the oasis be no larger even than a tablecloth, than a desert of dreariness — larger than Sahara. We can all be intensive, even if we cannot yet be extensive; deep, if we cannot be wide; concentrated, if we cannot be diffused. The smallest pool of water can mirror the sun; it does not require an ocean. Let us live up to our possibilities for a single day, and we will not have to die to get to heaven; we will be making heaven for ourselves and for others right here — today on this little, spinning globe we call the earth. What a man is at any moment of life does not fix what he may become. It is not necessarily a destination; it may be merely a station; a chapter, not the complete story. Progress is but the continuous revelation of possibilities transformed into realities. We see the running, but not the goal. It is not results that are the true test of living, for they may lie outside the individual's power to control, but it is ever the moral and mental qualities he puts into the struggle. The world's standard of judging is not in accord with the higher ethics of the soul. It is not getting the best, but proving worthy of the best, that is the revelation of true character. The man who talks airily of the things he would do if only he had time, unconscious of the golden hours of wasted oppportunity frittering idly through his fingers, had better wake up. He often envies those who have performed some marvel in self -education, when but a small section of the time he squanders in a year with the lavish recklessness of a Monte Cristo would enable him to learn a new language. Every hour is a new chariot of time's possibilities that might be laden with rich treasure, but if man tacks up the sign, "no freight," he should not complain of the subsequent barrenness of result. The roll of the great leaders in 796 IMPROVEMENT ERA. human thought and effort have not been those who had the best opportunities, but those who made — the best use of them. There are men battling with the soil on poor, ansemic farms, that yield but a bare living, while underneath those acres may be rich veins of coal, wells of oil, that need but the revealing, or beds of other minerals that mean liberation from the slavery of poverty. It is not easy to make them manifest, but the greater treasures of the individual's possibilities within his own heart, mind and life he can bring out if he only will. Self-confidence is a virtue that should never lead a single life; it should be wedded — to tireless energy. There come high-tide moments in all lives when contemplating some heroic deed, when our ears are filled with the triumphal music of a great thought, when the vitalizing words of some great thinker or teacher reach our soul through our eyes with a message of illumination. We then see our life in new perspective. The meanness and emptiness of living on low levels shame the soul out of self-complacency, and we seem to see wondrous visions of our possibilities, glimpses of what we might become. It is a coming face to face with our higher self that may recreate our lives for all the years, if we only will. Let us realize our progressive possibilities, make them real, vital, growing, not uselessly held — as a warm, living seed may rest for years in the dead hand of a mummy. Realizing possibilities is the soul of optimism, and optimism is the soul of living. (The next article of this series, "Forgetting as a Fine Art," will appear in the August number of the Era.) A Morning Prayer. The day returns and brings us the petty round of irritating concerns and duties. Help us to play the man, help us to perform them with laughter and kind faces. Let cheerfulness abound with industry. Give us to go blithely on our business all this day, bring us to our resting beds weary and content and undishonored, and grant us in the end the gift of sleep. Amen. — Robert Louis Stevenson.