To My Magnificent Agent, Staff and Friends:
Sir Winston Churchill once noted that “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” None of us makes it alone. We all have memories of people who contributed positively to our lives: parents, coaches, friends, spouses, teachers – those have given us so much while asking for little or nothing in return. The simple and wonderful paradox of life is that by helping others we also help ourselves. As those we reach out to grow physically, emotionally or spiritually, so do we, for the Bible says, “He who has compassion on the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his good deed.” Proverbs 20:17.
At some point in our lives, all of us struggle with identifying and carrying forward our purpose in life. What is our mission on earth? That is a question that each of us has to meet in some form, even if we refuse to put it into words, or even though we decline to think about it at all. The question is there for us to answer, and we answer it with our life. We may indeed never have given it a thought, but we have given it an answer by the way we are living. So, how do we know whether we are achieving our purpose of life? It is in the actual way we are living our lives that we find the real answer to the voiceless question that nature put before us from the moment we entered this world, and the question that remains with us until we quit our sphere of human action and return to our spiritual condition.
There are two great ideals of life that answer this question. The one is the ideal of giving; the other is that of getting. Altruism and egotism, self-sacrifice and self-aggrandizement: these are the two ideals between which each person must choose, and does choose whether consciously or not. For we all must act in some way, and our acts are our life, whatever our explanation of our acts may be; and our life shows our choice, even though our words and wishes seem to point another way.
But what is giving, and what is getting? What is it that enables us to choose whether we will be a giver or a getter?
It is said “the divine give,” and to become divine we must act divinely. How is this possible if we are but human? Simply by the fact that the divine is universal and is potentially present in every person. But while we are human, we each can shut our eyes to our own inherent divinity and act as if we were animals of that strange kind that materialistic science has invented, animals free from the restrictions of natural law (which is the expression of the divine in nature) and not bound by the higher law of the human kingdom.
The divine give, but how can a person give unless he has first gotten something to give? There lies the real point of interest in the whole subject, for it forces us to ask: what can we really get? what do we really own? and what can we give?
Property, wealth, position, are so little ours that in a moment we may lose them all by no fault of our own; nor can we really give these things to others (as all who think deeply know), for there is no real or permanent possession of things possible in the world as we know it.
The only real possession a person can have is that which he has made a part of his own character, a part of himself. A brave person can give courage to others, a cheerful individual can give hope, a generous person can give love, a capable one can give efficiency, a true poet, musician, artist, or orator can give inspiration. A religious person can give devotion or just such other qualities as his religion has developed in him. A person can give what he is because that is all he has to give. And our mission as human beings is to give, because our destiny is to become divine and the divine give. Hence, to give of oneself in service to others, in whatever fashion we can, is how we get to divinity.
Have a divine and AWE-full weekend!
Bill