The Romance of Life

Dr. Norman Vincent Peale one of the world's finest and most encouraging authors, author of the power of positive thinking. The positive way to change your life and the amazing results of positive thinking plus many others he has influenced the lives of tens perhaps hundreds of millions of people around the world.

When I was 12 years old, my father gave me a copy of the power of positive thinking. I didn't read it until I was in my mid-30s. More recently I came across an article of his called how to enjoy the best things in life. It's a segment from his masterpiece the new art of living in which Dr. Peale encourages us to slow down and to take time to live because success without the joy of living is a game for fools. So please sit back for one moment and enjoy this reading. I look forward to sharing this encouragement with you.

When Mrs. Ramsay MacDonald, the wife of a former British prime minister was dying, she called her husband to her bedside for a last word:” keep romance in the lives of our children” she admonished him. It was an impressive parting message which as we reflect upon. It is deep with wisdom. This mother knew as all who meditates seriously upon life must know that the passing years make a terrific assault on the zest of a man's spirit, unless he exercises care, will steal from him the romance of life. Napoleon said :”men grow old quickly on the battlefield, they do in life also unless they are vigilant.” Charles Lamb once declared :”our spirits grow gray before our hairs. “

One starts out in youth with anticipation. Excitedly he looks down the approaching years with the spirit of an adventurer. But before he has traveled far, life starts blowing its cold winds upon him. He tries his wings. Perhaps they fail him and some sadly enough having been disillusioned to time or to give over the dreams and plot wearily on over a pathway from which the romance has fled. This is one of the saddest things that can happen to anyone. They lose the thrill and zest of living.

There is one certain way to decide whether you are old. Namely what is your attitude of mind when you arise in the morning. The person who is young awakes with a strange feeling of excitement, a feeling which you may not be able to explain but which is as if to say, this is the great day, this is the day on which the wonderful things will happen.

The individual who is old regardless of age arises with the spirit unresponsive, not expecting any great thing to happen, this day will be just about like all the rest, I may hope it will be no worse.

Some people retain the spirit of expectation at threescore and ten, some lose it early in life.  The measure of one's age is actually how well he retains the romance of life. Perhaps William Wordsworth gave us the best description of the sad process that takes place in many. He wrote:” heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy; but he beholds the light and whence it flows , he sees it in his joy;  the youth who daily farther from the east must travel, still is Nature's priest, and by the vision splendid is on his way attended; at length the man perceives it died away, and fade into the light common day.

The romance of life is so priceless possession that it is a supreme tragedy to lose it. One may acquire much in wealth, fame or honor, the real joy of life does not lie there but rather in keeping the romance of living going. Nothing gives such complete and profound happiness as the perpetuality fresh wonder of mystery of exciting life.

When I was a small boy, I lay in bed at night and heard the long low whistle of the train among the hills of southern Ohio. I could see in imagination the speeding train with its brightly lighted cars whisking through the night. I always used to love a train and to me there was no more thrilling a sight than a big express train speeding over a countryside rightly silhouetted against the darkness. Chief ambition of my boyhood days was to be a railroad engineer. I am thankful that such things still thrill me. When these thrills pass, the romance of life is on its way out.

How quickly for some the freshness of life passes away- the work to which we set ourselves with high hopes and intense interest is allowed to degenerate into dreary monotony; the marriage begun with such bliss becomes commonplace in the steady round of day-by-day living; the hopes and ambitions which once stirred us become lifeless by horizons no longer beckon; the joy of life has fled, leaving our days hollow and our activity meaningless.

What shall we do? What do people generally do when they discover that the excitement of life is going or is gone? Many turn completely to material things as the possible source of its recovery. They think if they can just possess more things, have more money, enjoy more privileges, go more places, the old joy in life will return.

Others turn to a pleasure program where they find the romance of life growing dull. By new sensations they argue they will regain life's thrill. They forget that one thrill calls for another in endless succession until a person loses his sensitive appreciation of the beautiful and becomes calloused and cynical.

Still others hope to recapture it by casting aside all restraint and ideals. The trouble with that method is that sensations wear out and become jaded also bypass it as we will. Everyone has a troublesome little affair in him called the conscience, which is easily hurt and a pain in that area is hard to cure.

Moreover in every man given him by nature is an innate self-respect, which while it may not prevent him from doing evil , will keep him from ever having peace after he succumbs to evil. There are others honest wholesome people who just bravely accept the dreariness of life's hardships but some fortunate people have found the true method of keeping romance in life. There was Robert Louis Stevenson confined to a bed of pain through long years yet able to write such happy lilting little verses that children everywhere have been made joyous by them. Here's one. The children sing in far Japan, the children sing in Spain, the organ and the organ man are singing in the rain. Stevenson himself knew how to sing in the rain.

All of which brings us to the fact we want to emphasize that the secret of a successful and happy life consists in taking time to live. Life is an art and to be successful in any art is necessary to know the real from the imitation and to be content only with finest of quality.

The tragic fact is that many people are content with imitation life when they could just as easily possess the genuine. In the Barrett's of Wimpole Street, Elizabeth Barrett Browning thoughtfully protests “what frightens me is that men are content with what is not life at all.” she is right about many of us.

We passed hastily through Restless hurried anxious days and call it living. Thinking if we capture a vagrant thrill now and then, it is  life! Deep in our hearts, however we know that real life is better than that. It is a great and wonderful experience which is to be fervently desired.

The time in which we live has made real life difficult but as we shall see far from impossible. We are a generation busy with things. Stevenson wrote :"the world is so full of a number of things. I am sure we should all be as happy as Kings. " The world has many more things than in Stevenson's day but there is a grave too many cases has but multiplied our confusion.

If William Wordsworth in the quiet of the English lake country could say years ago:" the world is too much with us" what would he say now in modern America? We are also a generation of busyness- hurry and speed drive us. On a large billboard near the outskirts of a middle western city proclaims "this is the city of wings and heels. "So is most every city.

We have the green light psychology not that we must make the green light but how terrible to wait through the red. Watch people waiting for the light to change, notice that tense expression that is one thing wrong with us. All of this has had unfortunate physical effects it has made nerves and high blood pressure and heart trouble widespread in speaking of the physical and nervous effects of hurry.

William James said either the nature nor the amount of our work is accountable for the frequency and severity our breakdowns but their cause lies rather in the absurd feeling of hurry and having no time in breathlessness and tension and anxiety. This has done something even more serious to modern people I refer to. Its deep psychological and cultural effects it has had a tendency to make us superficial and thus incapable of appreciating the deeper and more subtle values.

This hectic hasty hurrying age of hours has left the average man bewildered and out of breath. It has made him think that the chief virtue is to keep up with the flying clock. We seem to have the idea that everyone must be constantly doing something- one must be driving a car, or dancing ,or playing bridge or golf, or going to the theater, or doing something. The American people and that means you and I greatly need to reduce life's tempo unless we are to allow this hurly-burly space age to rob us of life's deepest meaning of happiness.

A story is told of some Americans who are making their way through Africa. They had employed a group of natives at the Seaport and had told them that they were in a great hurry as Americans usually are. The first day they went with rapid progress through the jungle. They continued the relentless place the second day. The third morning when they were hurriedly preparing for another day of rapid travel, they found the guides squatting under the trees and refusing to move and they're bewildered and helpless employers asked them what they were doing? why they were not ready to start? they said simply :”we shall rest today and let our souls catch up with our bodies”

Our failure to take time to live actually prevents us from deriving the best from life. Man assuredly was never meant by the good God to beat out his life in a hurry and tumult, wearing out his nervous system and making his inner life shabby. We are given this world to live in happily and reflectively. Let us take time to live.

Most of us were brought up on the books of Horatio Alger, one bore the title strive and succeed that point of view has been carried to an extreme. Good hard work is one of man's greatest boons and the lazy man is to be pitied but perhaps we will succeed better if we strive less or at least reduce the tension of our efforts . What good is it anyway to succeed if one cannot enjoy life in the process? We are missing the secret of happy life in this modern spirit of hurry. Taking time to live means to realize that the supreme values of this world are spiritual things- like music, art ,literature, nature and religion.

Many people especially hard-pressed businessman feel mistakenly that music and art and books and religion are not as pressingly important as the massive details with which their lives are filled. Such men will find themselves becoming a mere machine whereas God designed each one to be a man. It is well to remember that we do not primarily live to work, we work to live!  A person who spends his life with details as the chief concern misses the mark and dies a failure . No matter what success he attains, he never learned the skill of life.

Do not be a slave to life's machinery. Get a song, a lovely poem and the whisper of God's voice in your mind. you may not know it but I will tell you honestly that you are starved for these things and the worst kind of hunger is the longing of man's soul for the things that are more nourishing than bread. No wiser thing was ever said than that statement of the great thinker Jesus:” man does not live by bread alone” He lives instead by the beauty of nature, by music and art and supremely by the presence of the eternal.

I ,a city dweller, once had a summer place on the Cedar Crested bluff overlooking a lovely Bay, down by the sea, the light breezes off the mighty ocean swept cares away the soft sunlight falling on the grass taught the quiet repose of the unhurried sounds of the natural world so different in quality from the strident city noises. These quietened me as a mother soothe a troubled child and at night when the stars came out blossoming one by one in the infinite meadows of heaven and a hush fell over land and sea I could hear the friendly voice of Mother Nature, which is the voice of God, saying :"my child, this is life, take time to live it."

Taking time to live also means to cultivate friendships. Shakespeare advised us to bind our friends to us with boots of Steel. Mark Twain reminded us that good books and good friends make up the ideal life. We are less than smart to permit the busyness of life to keep us from the happiness of creative friendships.

I learned a good lesson once from an Irish happy man. It was in Dublin Ireland where I called to see a leading merchant of that city. I found a large and very busy department store and surrounded with all the details of its administration was the men I had come to see, seeing he was busy. I tried after a brief greeting to excuse myself but he asked me to wait and in a few minutes reappeared with his hat. Soon we were seated in his car and he was enthusiastically showing me the sights of the city. When I remarked at his courtesy and leaving his work to be so gracious to me. He said in his big voice:"Not a bit of it, not a bit of it . I never overlooked a chance to make a new friend. And besides and this struck me- I am running the store, the store isn't running me." This man knew how to live and his spirit showed it.

The busyness of cultivating friends also suggests that the thought that God intended us to find interest and fellowship in people. we are unfortunately so excessively taken up with ourselves and the technique of our days that we miss the rare delight of learning to know better all sorts and conditions of men.

It is rewarding to cultivate the habit of looking for the interesting people in life There is something interesting in every person. Look at the man across from you on the bus or subway, ordinary-looking enough, isn't it? yes, but if you only knew the drama, the tragedy, the comedy, even the glory, and heroism in that man's life, he would be full of interest to you.

Some of the greatest books ever written are about simple everyday people and simple everyday happenings. The genius of Charles Dickens and other enduring writers is to be found in their ability to see the dramatic quality in what is often mistakenly called commonplace life. There is no such thing as commonplace life.

In Florence Italy I saw the painting by Raphael , called the Madonna of the barrel. The outline of the head of a barrel in lieu of canvases plainly discernible the story is that Rafael was walking one day through the marketplace of Florence. we saw a mother, evidently a very poor woman, sitting in the street with her child at her breast. She was dressed in shabby attire but her face was the ineffable expression of Mother Love. Raphael was so charmed by her appearance that nothing would do but that he must paint her at once and where she sat accordingly. He took for his canvas, the head of an old barrel which was conveniently nearby and using color and brushes which were in his pocket painted on the Barrelhead a picture which today hangs in the galleries of Florencea masterpiece. Raphael was an immortal artist by reason of his native gifts but more than that because of his capacity to see the beautiful and the romantic in everyday people even a poor woman in the marketplace.

Now can we dully complain that life has lost interest. Look upon the face of that dear one near you. Hear the happy laughter of that little child. Really know your fellow men. Life will never lose its romance for the person who were unselfishly does good for the people. Those who do lose the thrill of living are the ones who develop the habit of thinking exclusively about themselves, who are constantly concerned with their own interests, or their own pleasures, or what is more common their own troubles.

Start the habit of doing good to the people nearest you. This policy will make you so happy that you will sing inside. That the whole world about you will take on richer color, the grass will be greener, the songs of the birds will be sweeter, the stars will be brighter, the skies bluer, and even if the bank account is low and things are tough. The dreariness of life will depart if you learn the secret of finding your happiness in human service.

I have often heard my father relate the following incident of which he was an eyewitness as illustrating how human kindness and helpfulness can develop a happy and exciting life.

The man about whom this story is told was a great expert in the art of living and by his personality impressively showed that technique of that art to his students who have not forgotten it after many years.

It's the story of Johnny, the newsboy in a Midwestern City. Some years ago was a great surgeon who was also a professor in the medical school. This surgeon was a true physician in that he not only had superlative skills but also loved people and went about doing good. He became deeply interested in the little crippled newsboy of the corner with a doctor regularly bought his paper, he was a bright little fellow. This news boy and the famous surgeon said to him one day:" Johnny would you like to have me cure that leg of yours so that you could run and play like other boys?" " Oh doctor, said the little lad," that would make me so happy !" Accordingly the surgeon arranged to operate upon the boy and explained to him that he wanted to perform the operation in the presence of his class of medical students to teach the students how to help other little boys when they became doctors.

Johnny agreed he was placed before the surgeon and the students were arranged so they could witness the operation. The doctor explained the disease and operative procedures he was to follow. When all was ready, he said :"now Johnny we're going to fix that leg of yours and attendance started to administer the anesthetic." Johnny raised his head and said in a voice that could be heard all over the room:"God bless you , Dr. Dawson. you've been so good to me." Surgeon looked down at him, tears came to his eyes. He put his hand on the head of the little fellow and said :"thank you, Johnny."  After the successful operation, the surgeon said to the students:" I have operated on many great and prominent men, upon millionaires, senators, governors ,and have received many large fees, but what that little boy said was the greatest fee I have ever received in my life.

Can you imagine romance leaving the life of a man like that? oh love people and help them that will help keep life fresh always and interesting. We miss the fascination in people, so do the charm and delight of things escape us in our busyness.

John Ruskin shrewd observer of men's foibles as well as their greatness once sadly commented:" I'm not surprised of what men suffer. I'm surprised at what men miss a whole world of beauty and fascination is spread about us but we are blind to much of it not because any fundamental lack of the quality of appreciation within ourselves but simply because we do not take time to let this beauty affect us."

Consider the pleasure we miss in books, pictures, and music because we do not take time for them. Every night there stretches over us the awe-inspiring canopy of the heavens. Sometimes we are caught by ADD and brought to a stop. Especially in a country place and we see it again with a sense of newness as one who looks upon something familiar and it becomes fresh again because of long absence this glory is for our inspiration nightly but we are too much in a hurry and we bypass it.

Life was meant to be enjoyed. Life was made for man not man for life. It was never intended that one should beat his life out on a treadmill, losing his very personality in the rattle and roar of an artificial civilization.

If one should come into a beautiful room with fine paintings on the wall, a fireplace ablaze, easy chairs to rest in, and beautiful rugs on the floor, he would conclude that the place has been prepared for his pleasure happiness. Accordingly as we look about us in this world with our exquisite beauty and obvious delights, we must surely feel it is good and that life itself is good. Let us take time to live and enjoy it.

He who learns to do so is master of the art of living.