Goshen College - Maple Leaf Yearbook (Goshen, IN)

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12 GOSHEN COLLEGE RECORD. Life Is Living Crissie C. Yoder HAT is life? Ask this question, and after you have repeatedly read and carefully considered all state- ments regarding life itself, you still ask, t4What is life?'l for no simple, plain definition has ever been found. We have descriptions of its functions and characteristics but we have not never know what life in principle is we been told what it is. Though we may take it just as it is-a grand oppor- tunity for living, and we may describe living as action and reaction between organisms and their environment. Scientists tell us that the continued existence of any organism depends up- on its adaptation to its environment and that those unfortunate individuals that lack the power of adjustment to their conditions of life are not merely handicapped and at a disadvantage, but cannot live. Looking at a bird perched high in the swinging treetops or beating the air with its wings and soaring up, up, until it becomes lost in the heavens, one sees a wonderful ad- justment to surroundings. A fish placed in this same environment, be- cause of lack of such adaptation can- not live, but dropped into the water to which its organism is adapted it lives as truly as does the bird in the air. This adaptation of an organism to its surroundings has its counterpart in the human soul. The soul also is a livnig reality, there are real surroundings and it is just as impossible to abstract the living reality from its surroundings. Here, too, not only progress and happi- ness, but life itself depends on adjust- ment to surrounding conditions. Looking above the realm of air and food the essential features in the sur- roundings of the human soul are hu- man souls, other men, and the adapta- tion to this personal environment con- stitutes the life of man. To take then, one's proper place in the great family of men, to treat them as real brothers -this is life. In other words, life is living. Life is, of necessity, in large part habit. Breathing becomes an uncon- scious habit and moves smoothly on by day and night. Such a very great part of life is made up of unthinknig obedi- ence to such habits that entimes it is supposed to include simply this, and no more. But when we say life is liv- ing, we mean not mere existence, but actual throbbing living, living that gladly grasps life and lives it. Neither is life activity or the work and service we may have been given the means to accomplish for we are al- ways living but not always acting. Yet Udo the right thing is emphasiz- ed and we watch our acts and shape them carefully lest they be wrong. The one characteristic of our day is this exaltation of doing. lt is assumed that if men do noble things they are making the most of life. The tone of discussion is impersonal and questions of moral attitude and personal living are saved from scrutiny. Thus men who are not living get along very easily and are quite cheerful by mak- ing life seem doing. Nevertheless acts are trifles in comparison with living,

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GOSI-IEN COLLEGE RECORD. 13 for life is not the mere activity of a mechanism which works with mathe- matical precision. It is living-adapt- ing ones self to humanity and having a part in the life of each and all. Certainly individuality is a necessary element of man and may never be sur- rendered. You must be yourself first- ly, lastly and always, for just as you are you have some quality, some value, a message, a mission, that is your own, and for which you must stand if you are to be anything. But though wc may never forget that a man must be true to his own individuality, this fact has been magnified until there is a ten- dency to center life around one 's own soul completely, forgetting the environ- ment. A fight is made to keep from being swept into the stream of ordin- ary human life lest we lose our own high ideals. There is an inevitable law of society which divides the human race into classes while still recognizing the maxim that all men are created equal. And so it comes about that there are divisions, each with its own important part to play, and its duty to perform in the history of mankind. Our environ- ment includes all classes and to all classes therefore, if we are truly to live, we must be able to adapt our- selves. Much as we may try to deny it our own college seems to cut the student off from ordinary human life. We live in a world apart, outside the busy, hurrying mass of men and women who are striving to get a living, succeeding and failing in the ordinary routine of daily life. True, we realize the need of cultivating a deep human sympathy and the ability to put one 's self in the place of another but it is so easy and so pleasant to keep in sympathy with no other methods of life than our own and with no other classes of society than our own. Too often we have our likes and dislikes of persons among our small number so pronounced that We acquire an attitude of exclusiveness, an air of superiority, which renders us half dead and inefficient even in our small community. We fail to adapt ourselves completely to our present environment, and more than this we fail in the same thing as we change our environment and not living our- selves, we cannot help others to live. lmbued with lofty sentiments, great principles, and nobility of purpose we fail to bring a heartfelt sympathy to those who expect and need it most, we fail to be just good folks. We try to gaze at the panorama of life from our higher point of vantage and before we realize it we have lost our own life. The superiority of the life of service is evident to all of us and though the life of service tends to coincide with living, they are by no means identical. The scientist who lets the world of nature obscure his interest in the living men and women about him is not alive. The historian who allows the life of past centuries to be more important than humanity on the earth at the present time ,is not alive.- And though such men may do some service, and though there may seem to be some of beauty and worth and attractiveness in this, it is to be dead to the best the hu- man soul may possess. ln the home, in college, in business, in charity work, in any walk of life there is this distniction of superiority and brotherhood, of shining down from above with high ideals and power and of sharing on a level, of reforming from the outside, or living on the inside of homely life just as it is. Deeper far