• Author: B-9080
• Editor: B-8266
• Newspaper: The Umpire volume V
• Page Number:
• Date: 8 28 1918
• Tags:
• advice

DETRACTION

It is the tragedy that comes into the life of the average man outside prison walls that puts the feeling of pity in his heart for the man inside and the only way that the man inside can hope to deserve the sympathy is to prove worthy of it.

We are not the only ones who go through life suffering and blundering; we are not the .only ones who are blind, ignorant and erring. Of course, now that we are here, we are looked upon as moral perverts. The fact that there are others outside who have’nt been sent here yet does’nt excuse us from stopping to think and to plan out our own salvation.

Back of the direct act which sent us here were the motives and back of the motives were our aspirations. Then it follows that we thought that our aspirations would lead us to happiness. Suppose the law had’nt got us and we had been successful in the ‘‘job’’ we had done, would we have succeed- ed in gaining happinese?

Then again, since happiness is all we live to gain, would’nt it be a good idea to find out how it can be gained without breaking into jail? Have’nt we got our sense of value twisted? If we are in any sense ignorant as to what constitutes true happiness, it’s a good time now to take up the matter with ourselvss.

Every philosopher that we have any record of has said that a selfish man can not be happy and as we have no one else we can go to for advice, except our own experience, what are we going to do about it?

The life in our narrow environment is apt to become narrower unless we endeavor to broaden it by higher aspirations and the mneccessary thoughts to that end. This can be done to a great extent by reading good books and the Prison library is full of them.

Our prison life is apt to make us fault-finding and grouchy; this has to be fought against as well as the tendency to “knock.” Many fine things have been done to make this prison better and with all the hard efforts of the leaders in these movements for our betterment, there have been kicks and growols by a few of the beneficiaries of these efforts.

There is too much for us to do to straighten out the kinks in our own lives, to allow us time to ‘‘knock’’ our neighbor. It might be that we see the faults of others because we have so many of our own, or conversely, we can not see their virtues because we have none of our own‘; however, the man who “knocks’’ can get but very little satisfaction but his own unpleasant thoughts.

It is often late in life when a man comes to the knowledge that detraction is so absolutely useless, aside from a moral point of view and these thoughts are not given in any other spirit than to pass on to others the result of the writers experience and to save them from having to live to the age of inefficiency to find these truths out.

We are a part of the great, blind, wistful, soul of mankind, all blindly groping for happiness and it is a great thing to know that hate, envy and bitterness does’nt get us anything.

B 9080.