Provided that you aim, throughout your life, as you continue
learning, to integrate your thought, to make it harmonious. If you happen to be
an engineer and also enjoy singing in a glee club, connect these two activities.
They unite in you; they are not in conflict. Both choral singing and engineering
are examples of the architectonic ability of man: of his power to make a large
plan and to convey it clearly to others. Both are esthetic and depend much on
symmetry. Think about them not as though they were dissociated, but as though
each were one aspect of a single unity. You will do them better, and be
happier.
This is hard advice to give to young students. They are explosive,
exploratory and insurrectionary. Instead of intergrating their lives, they would
rather seek outward, and even try to move in opposite directions
simultaneously.
Much unhappiness has been suffered by those people who have
never recognized that it is as necessary to make themselves into whole and
harmonious personalities as to keep themselves clean, healthy and financially
solvent. Wholeness of the mind and spirit is not a quality conferred by nature,
or by God. It is like health, virtue and knowledge. Man has the capacity to
attain it; but to achieve it depends on his own efforts. It needs a long,
deliberate effort of the mind and the emotions, and even the body.
During our earthly life, the body gradually dies; even the emotions
become duller. But the mind in most of us continues to live, and even grows more
lively and active, enjoys itself more, works and plays with more expansion and
delight.