Polk High School - Cub Yearbook (Polk, NE)

Page 21 text:

n A J r XI AT The Measure of Your Life —S. G. Kessler You come to the time of your graduation from high school with a better acquaintance with the world than bny graduating class in the history of the world. Far away places with romantic sounding names which to most graduating seniors were names of cities, islands, or areas to be known by rote in case they should come up in some examination are known rather directly to you because you have talked with some people who have been there. Lews of affairs and of events all over the world which, in a not distant past, were quite beyond the realm of knowledge covered by high schools are now studied and analyzed by you in youf- classes in history, political science, and economics. Political movements, at home and abroad, which only a few years back seemed rather remote from the sort of knowledge which high school seniors ought to be studying, are now part of your routine. You graduate with a knowledge of a wider range of subjects and a lurger personal acquaintance with scientific achievement than any other class in history. You hove seen things happen in your lifetime so rapidly and so revolutionary that you have already witnessed more change in your seventeen or eighteen years than people witnessed in a lifetime a thousand years ago. The tempo of our life has speeded up tremend- ously and it takes a far better person to live in this world today than in any age of the world’s history. I am suggesting two simple standards whereby you may judge the measure of your life. First, the measure of y our 111 c i s not iiov. Ion-5 you Hyp but how you live. Methuselah livecT almost u tEousand years but his whole biograph” is w ritten in thr.m. sentences. Jesus Christ lived thirty-three years in the flesh and ail history is His Liogxaphy. We must live by the great convictions which are the prized possession of the race. We must live according to those truths to which we will be loyal though the heavens fall. It is not how long you live but how you live. Secondly, it is not simply how much you know but what you do wit] what you know. Certain knowledge is otjiously required but m our day we suffer not so much from a lack of knowledge as from the lack of a proptr direction for that knowledge. We do not lack speed. We lack a sense of direction, n generation which can build a B-29 ar a P-80 is likewise smart enough, if it desires desperately enough, to create a world which con live at peace.” —S. G. Kessler