St. Nicholas/Volume 40/Number 4/Simple Thoughts
LOOKING AT THE STARS
BY GEORGE LAWRENCE PARKER
In olden days, the study of the stars was very common, and for a long time they were the only lights that people had at night. But to-day we have so many other lights after dark, that the poor stars are neglected and forgotten.
What I want to do in our talk together is to see if we are not mistaken in our heedlessness about the stars. As important as the North Star is to sailors are some of those which I have now in mind.
One of the first stars is ambition. “Oh,” some one will say, “if a boy is ambitious, he may want to get ahead in school or athletics by some wrong means.” Certainly, that is true. But in that case his ambition is not a-star. A real ambition never guides us slantwise, or crooked, but straight ahead. It will not let us win our way unless we win it fairly. One of the saddest things to say about a person is, “He has lost his ambition.” That means that his sky is dark, his head is down, and he does not see the stars above him.
I cannot now stop to name all the noble ambitions that we may have. Yet for each of us there ought to be some one ambition greater than all the others, so that we can use it as the sailor uses the North Star. He may see all the stars, but only one guides him. If we let one splendid ambition take hold of us, it will direct us. An ambition does not mean merely getting ahead of some one else. It means that we seek to do one thing and to do it well. Then we learn its secrets. It opens out to us not only its own heart, but the heart of the whole world.
Put in your sky this star of ambition. It will always tell you that there is something for you to do and to be.
Another star is purpose. This is not the same as ambition, but it is a strong star. I may have an ambition without having purpose. I may want to learn a great deal, but forget to ask what I hope to do with my knowledge. An ambitious person who has no purpose will find that his one star means very little. If I have purpose, my ambition has another star to keep company with it. I may sometimes see that I cannot fulfil my ambition, but I need never give up my purpose. For instance, I know a man of great ability whose ambition was to be a physician. But his real purpose was to help people. It happened that this friend had great misfortune, and was never able to study medicine. You might say he had to give up his star of ambition. Yes, but he never gave up his purpose to help people. And to-day he does more good than almost any man I know. He finds poor children who need medical care, and he sees that they get it. We can all hitch our wagon to that star of purpose, for it is not out of the reach of any of us. If you have an ambition, be sure you ask what purpose lies behind it.
Now I see another great star. It is hope. “Oh,” you say, “young people do not need to hear about hope. They have plenty of it.’ Well, I wonder if they have? And even if that is so, hope is a very easy thing to lose. It is really a very strange star; but a star, nevertheless. How often we fall back: on the phrase, “I hope so.” Hope is meant to help us over the present moment of doubt and discouragement. We need it after success just as truly as we need it after defeat. A great victory may rob us of hope just as much as a failure. Hope is a little star that shines in front of ambition and above purpose. Its light comes and goes. When we are very busy, we do not need it so much, but when we sit down to ask just what it is that we are busy about, hope comes out and says, “Here I am; this is the reason you are busy.” It would be almost better to give up both ambition and purpose than to give up hope. We have all heard the old saying, “While there ’s life, there ’s hope.” That does not refer to sick people. It means that any one who is truly alive keeps on hoping. Hope is the everlasting sense that we are coming out somewhere. Hope tells us that our self-improvements, the great world, all the labor of men and women, that all of this has actual value.
Set the star of hope in your sky. Have great hope of yourself and of the people around you. Put hope in your work, in your study, in your present, and in your future.
Now just one more star. And that is—wonder. But what a strange star, wonder! And yet you know when people stop wondering, it will be a still stranger world that we live in. We go to school to learn things, but we go still more to increase our wonder. The great scientist Agassiz could wonder for days over some little stone which I would perhaps just look at and say, “Oh, it ’s only a pebble.” He knew so much about stones that every common rock was full of wonder for him. The more we know of our life and our world, the more wonderful they are. It is only the wise person who knows how to wonder, and only the ignorant person who gives up wondering. This star of wonder is sometimes called imagination, but the name we give it matters little. Milton had a great capacity for wonder, and Shakspere; and all the men who have said or done wonderful things. They saw so much in the simple, common things that they refused to call them simple and common. What I mean by this is that the world is very old and dull and uninteresting to some people, not because it is really so, but because they have called it so. They have forgotten to wonder. They have put out one of the brightest stars in their whole sky. Be sure to look for this star. Wonder tells us that this is a very marvelous world to all who will set themselves to learn about it; a wonder-full world is the only right way to describe it. Wonder will give us more than money can ever buy for us. Wordsworth could say,
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
Now do you see what I mean by looking at the stars? Does n’t the wagon get lifted out of-the ruts when we hitch it to a star? Don’t let the stars go out! Nor let the other lights make you forget them.
Ambition, purpose, hope, wonder! All of these and many others are still shining. Follow the stars!