Chapter 4 - How to Aim

To Life, the force behind the Man, intellect is a necessity, because without it he blunders into death. Just as Life, after ages of struggle, evolved that wonderful bodily organ, the eye, so that the living organism could see where it was going and what was coming to help or threaten it, and thus avoid a thousand dangers that formerly slew it, so it is evolving today a mind’s eye that shall see, not the physical world, but the purpose of Life, and thereby enable the individual to work for that purpose instead of thwarting and baffling it by setting up shortsighted personal aims as at present. Even as it is, only one sort of man has ever been happy, has ever been universally respected among all the conflicts of interests and illusions … I sing, not arms and the hero, but the philosophic man; he who seeks in contemplation to discover the inner will of the world, in invention to discover the means of fulfilling that will, and in action to do that will by the so-discovered means.

-- Bernard Shaw.

Without definiteness of aim nothing can be accomplished.

With too definite an aim very little can be accomplished.

This is the paradox of all accomplishment. It looks hard, but is in reality very easy -- so easy that a child lives it.

The key to the problem is this: No man 1iveth unto himself and none dieth unto himself; we are all members one of another; all creation moves to “one far-off divine event,” the definite details of which no human being has yet grasped. Perhaps none ever will grasp it. For how can the hand or the foot conceive the structure and purposes of the whole body?

There is a Universal Aim which includes and impels all individual aims. There is one great intelligence, one spirit, one purpose actuating every human being. The “Plan of Salvation” is not a mere superstitious myth. There certainly is a “plan,” a “divine event,” which we are all working at, whether we know it or not.

There is a Divine Ideal beckoning us every one. Glimpses of it are caught even by the fool who hath said in his heart there is no God, no oneness of life and purpose. As our bodies are all members of God’s body, so our ideals are members of the Universal Ideal; our aims are members of the Universal Aim.

Your hand may understand and define its impulse to grasp or release; but can it understand and define your aim and purpose, which gave it the impulse?

We can imagine the hand understanding its own movements, but can it understand your movements and purposes? The hand says, “I want to grasp this”; but can it in any sense understand your purpose, which made it want to grasp?

So you say, “I want to paint pictures.” or “I want to make money,” or “I want to teach school,” or “I want to be a home-keeper and mother,” or “I want to build bridges.” But can you tell why you want to do these things or others?

Can you define the Great I WANT of which your I want is but an outcropping? Can you see the Universal Ideal of which your ideal is a detail? No; you can see your individual I want, but the Universal I WANT is too large for you to take in from your point of view. Did you ever say to yourself, "I want to be a bridge builder”; then after you had become a successful bridge builder did you find yourself rather disgusted with the bridge business? Did you find yourself saying, “I want to be a painter instead of a bridge builder”? And you couldn’t imagine why your wants wouldn’t stay satisfied with bridge building.

Can you imagine the hand being disgusted because after it had grasped the book awhile it found itself wanting to let go? Of course. The hand would not understand why it could not remain “constant” to its first desire: it would not see the reason for letting go. So with us members of the “Stupendous Whole.”

Universal purpose and desire play through us. We know we “want” this and we “don’t want” that. When we are on the “animal” plane we simply gratify our wants when we can, and are satisfied until another want impels us. By and by we begin to reason about our wants. We call some of them “good,” and gratify them if we can. We call some of them “bad” and fight them with all our puny might -- and are correspondingly unhappy. In both cases we fail to see why we want what we want.

When after we have learned to build bridges we find ourselves wanting to paint pictures we resist the desire and keep on building bridges. Then, if the Universal Purpose really wants us to stop building bridges and make pictures it keeps on impelling us in the new direction until we finally find a way to get at the painting. If we are too stubborn the Universal I WANT gets us out of the way and raises up our sons and daughters to paint the pictures.

It is like this: In response to the Universal I WANT you have taught your good right hand to thread needles and sew, until it can almost do it in the dark. All the nerves and brains and muscles in your finger tips have learned that little trick. Now, in response to a new Universal I WANT, you decide that that good right hand of yours is to learn to run scales on the piano.

You sit down at the piano, place your hand in position and impel it to strike the notes. But this sort of thing is entirely new to your fingers! Every little muscle is stiff, every nerve and every tiny bit of finger-brain protests that it can't run scales! -- it doesn’t know how! -- its work is sewing -- it can’t, so there! You say to yourself, “How stiff my fingers are, and how rebellious -- they won't mind me at all!”

But you keep on sending your want, your will into them. You “practice” long hours every day. And by and by you find your fingers have learned the new trick and can do it without special thought and will from you. You kept pouring your want into that hand until it became the hand’s want and will. From working against your want the hand has come to work with it and by it.

Why did you do it? Because the Universal I WANT kept pouring itself into you until you took up the practice; just as you poured the I WANT on into your hands until they, too, wanted to do it, and did it.

Were your fingers extra rebellious? Did they fight, and get tangled up, and imitate each other's movements? Then what did you do with them?

You kept them at it; and you kept them at it a great deal longer time than you would if they had been more obedient fingers; you kept them practicing until they learned to do the work willingly, with interest, artistically. Then you gave them beautiful things to play with, instead of hard things to work at.

Of course the beautiful things to play with are all made up of the very same sort of things your fingers have been working hard at. But the monotony of repetition is all gone from the beautiful play. It is joy to play. It is “hard work” to practice scales.

But without all those scales there can never be a satisfying play. In practice we learn by repetition to do well and gracefully one thing at a time. In play we string all these movements together in a satisfying play of joy and praise.

We hope for the perfection of action which alone makes satisfying play possible; therefore we keep practicing. The harder our fingers rebel, the longer and more persistently we keep them at it -- that is all.

Now the Universal I WANT keeps us at things in precisely the same way. The Universal is working out a glorious Ideal of perfect play, wherein every member of itself shall be shining, obedient, supple enough to play with grace and full joy the “music of the spheres.”

You and I being more or less stiff and disobedient and dense have to be kept at our practices until we learn to do them right. We say, “Oh, if I could only get into my right niche; but I seem to be held here in spite of all I can do!” We say we “don’t like” the sort of “drudgery” we are “condemned” to -- there must be something “wrong” with the universe, or with economic or family conditions, or we would not have to drudge at one kind of thing when we are “fitted” for something else, or want to do something else. Our fingers cry out in the same way when we keep them at the scales -- “Oh,” they cry, “why are we compelled to this dreary commonplace repetition when our souls long for beautiful harmonies?”

You see, it never occurs to them that they are “compelled” to this commonplace scale practice because they long for beautiful harmonies and happy play.

And it doesn’t occur readily to you and to me that we are held to our dish washing, our business routine, our bridge building because our souls long for greater things.

But it is so. The perfection of large ideals can never be attained except through perfection of detail; and through the dish washing, business routine, bridge building, we are perfecting the details of self-command, of body and brain control which will enable us to play the great harmonies our souls already feel.

The great things we feel and desire without being able to express them, comprise the Universal Ideal at which every soul is aiming, whether or not he knows it.

The perfection of this great Ideal we see as through smoked glass, darkly. We get all sorts of half-views of it, and spend a lot of time squabbling about it. But not one of us really knows even a tiny part of the glory and beauty and joy of that Universal Ideal, which includes and actuates all our personal ideals. “It doth not yet appear what we shall be.” But we know that when the Great Ideal does appear we shall all have our places in the joy of its beauty, for every one of us will have had his place and done his part in working out that ideal.

The Universal Ideal is gently urging us on to ineffable good. But none of us can conceive the details of the good which is yet to appear. We are all hoping and working for this “Indeterminate Good,” as Hanford Henderson calls it.

It constitutes our large Ideal, which includes all our lesser, fleeting ideals and even our passing wishes and longings.

It is with our large ideals that definiteness of aim is a mistake- An “indeterminate good” necessitates a general aim. It will not do to say “I know exactly where the blossoms will appear when the earth blossoms as a rose, and I know exactly the day they will appear; therefore will I till only those exact spots and get my ascension robes ready for that exact hour.” The man who is so dead sure of his great aim will sooner or later, like “Perkins” in “Quincy Adams Sawyer,” find himself perched on the ridgepole with his white robes flapping in the cold night and his goods in somebody else’s possession. When one is too sure of the “far-off divine event” he muddles the present opportunity for hastening that event.

“Wisdom is before him that hath understanding; but the eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth.” The man who is too sure of the “indeterminate good” misses the present good. The man who aims at the Great Good which he cannot hit, misses the little Goods, near at hand, which need to be hit.

What should we think of a hunter who aimed only at big game beyond his gun’s reach, while small game gamboled at his feet? We’d think him a fool who deserved to starve to death. Of course.

We miss our chances by straining after the big game beyond our reach. The great ideal should have our faith, rather than our aim.

Aim only at that which is within reach, and trust the big things to time and the spirit. You stand in the Now. Keep your aim for the things of the Now. Thus will your aim gain accuracy and you will be ready for the Great Things when they shall at last appear in the Now.

Where are you Now? Are you building bridges? Then aim to build this one better than any other was ever built. Aim to improve your work now.

Aim to enjoy it all; for only as joy brightens you can you see how to better your work and methods.

And proficiency at bridge building means freedom to follow your next ideal. The greater your proficiency the nearer the top you get, and the more money you get for your work; and the more money you have the more time you can take for working out your next ideal.

In proportion as you are progressively proficient at your work your money stream will increase. In proportion as you enjoy your work you will grow in efficiency and money. The drudge is held to his work because he does not put into it the love and interest and joy necessary to make him progressively proficient.

He says “lack of money keeps him from getting into a new line of work.” That is it exactly -- the Universal Spirit which urges us on keeps the money away from us until we have gained in this thing the proficiency needed to fit us for other work.

Are you building bridges and at the same time aiming to paint pictures? And are you too poor to drop the bridge building and devote all your time to painting pictures?

Then I say unto you have faith in your desire to paint pictures, for your desire is an outcropping of Universal Desire and is certain to find its satisfaction. Your desire is the desire of Omnipotence, Omniscience, which will in no wise disappoint itself. All desires shall be fulfilled in the fullness of time.

Would you hasten the time? Then have faith in your desire; but aim at the bridge building. Do better and better the work you find to do until the way opens to a new line of work.

And do every detail of your bridge building as if it were the painting of the greatest picture. Think you that accuracy of observation, delicacy of touch, harmony of thought and power of expression are gained only by dabbling paint on a canvas with a camel's hair brush? No. Bridge building has its place in training a great painter. Put your soul into it while you are held to it, and give it its full chance to do the work.

Have faith in your desire to paint pictures, but aim your energies at the bridge you are building now. Keep your faith high, your aim true, and verily in an hour when you least expect it the way will open from bridge building to picture painting