“Energy is what wins. Many men fail to reach the mark because the powder in them is not proportioned to the bullet.”
More men fail of success in life from lack of energy — that force which achieves, accomplishes, pushes its way through obstacles — than from almost anything else. No matter how much ability a young man may have, or how clever, courteous, or amiable he may be, if he lacks energy, the powder of success, he never will accomplish much.
Nothing else, excepting honesty, is so much in demand in these days as "vim." Everybody believes in it; everywhere we hear; "Give us a man who can do something; a man who has push; a man with iron in his blood." Ability is worthless without the power to put it into action. Resolutions, however good, are useless without the energy necessary to carry them out. Push clears the track; people get out of the way of an energetic man. Even small ability with great energy will accomplish more than the greatest ability without energy. If fired from a gun with sufficient velocity a tallow candle can be shot through an inch board.
On every hand we see fine young men and women failing, their ability going to waste, standing in equilibrium, for the lack of “force” If we could only shake them up, put a little powder into them and set them going, they might amount to something, but without this they are failures. They seem to have every other quality except that power of pushing their way, without which almost all their ability is wasted. The finest engine ever made would be absolutely useless without power to propel it and drag the load to its destination.
The world admires energetic men. Blow them this way and that, and they only bend; they never break. Put obstacles in their way, and they surmount them. It is almost impossible to keep such men down. Trip one up, and instantly he is on his feet again; bury him in the mud and almost instantly he is up and at it again. Such men as he build cities, establish schools and hospitals, whiten the ocean with sails, and blacken the air with the smoke of their industry.
The pathway of life is strewn with wrecks of those who have failed because they lacked this propelling power. The moment they strike an obstacle, they stop; they have no power to climb or overcome. The genius of achievement seems to have been left out of their makeup; their blood lacks the iron of energy, the force of accomplishment.
Nature has stored in every normal youth a reservoir of physical and mental energy which means much in the way of character, success, and happiness. The word economy is usually applied to the saving of money, but this, perhaps, is the least important of its applications. Wasting money is of little importance when compared with wasting energy, mental and vital forces and opportunities, a waste that endangers our highest welfare. Many a man who is economical to stinginess in money matters squanders, with fearful waste, his mental and moral energy.
It is considered a terrible thing for a youth to spend a thousand dollars of his father's money in a single night's dissipation; but what about the strain upon his vitality, the life forces which he throws away, or the wasted energy which might have been put into physical and mental achievement? What is the loss of money compared with the demoralization wrought by such a debauch? What are a thousand dollars in comparison with even a small fraction of precious life-power? Money lost may be regained, but vitality lost in dissipation not only cannot be regained, but it is also a thousand times worse than lost, because it has demoralized all that is left, deteriorated the character, and undermined the very foundation of all that is best in life.
Many busy people are shameful wasters of time and opportunity, simply because they do low things when higher ones are possible. They read a poor book when they might read a better one. They squander time with bad companions when good ones are possible. They waste time in half-doing things, in botching, bungling and blundering, in doing things over and over because they were not done right the first time.
A great waste of mental and moral vitality is indulging in demoralizing, vicious and deteriorating thoughts. Every bit of useless worry, — and all worry is useless, — every bit of anxiety, every particle of fretting and stewing, every bit of despondency, indulgence in melancholy or foreboding, every bit of fear, — fear of failure, of losses, of sickness, of disease, of death, of unjust criticism or ridicule, or of the unfavorable opinions of others, — all these things are vitality-sappers, worse than useless, for they unfit us for constructive, creative work by squandering that which makes such work possible.
One is wasting life force every time he talks of failure, of hard luck, of troubles and trials, of past errors and mistakes. If one would succeed, let him turn his back on the past, burning all the bridges behind him; turn his back to shadows and face the light. Every act of dishonesty, whether others know it or not, is a terrible life-waster. Every act or thought of impurity, every unholy desire, is a virtue-waster, a success-sapper.
Everything which frets, chafes, rasps or brings inharmony into life is a vitality-waster. Whatever brings discord into the nervous system destroys power. Friction is a deadly foe to happiness and success. It grinds away the delicate bearings of life's machinery without doing any good work or increasing any value. To free life from friction, to lubricate all the faculties, and to stop all the leaks of energy, is the first duty to oneself and to others.
Everywhere we go we see human machines going rattlety bang, clattering and thumping, grinding the bearings of the delicate human machinery, creaking from the lack of oil, bearings hot and hissing from leaks of the steam-valves. This delicate, living, pulsating machinery is filled with the dust of worry, the delicate bearings being scratched with anxiety. Everywhere we see frightful waste of energy — force oozing out of the holes of carelessness, of dissipation in the boiler. This wonderful machinery, so marvelously constructed, so delicately adjusted, and intended for running at least a century, we find thrown aside on the scrap pile before the owner has reached middle life. How careful he has been of his chronometer to wind it at just such a time, to have it cleaned regularly and adjusted and regulated to a fraction of a second a month; and yet, his living machine of infinite value, and which he cannot by any possibility duplicate, he abuses every day of his life. He would not think of exposing the works of his delicate watch to the damp air, or carrying it near the electric dynamo, and yet he abuses his living machine in all sorts of ways. By fits of jealousy, of hot temper, by hatred and by frightful dissipation, he racks and wrenches and warps this intricate, delicate, throbbing piece of mechanism — exposes it to all sorts of indignities — until it is no longer capable of running without jar, until it rattles and shakes and trembles and wobbles itself into a perfect wreck before it has accomplished a tithe of its work or served its purpose.