p. 12 | Looking at the Best Things by Priscilla Leonard

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 11, 1909

Looking at the Best Things

By Priscilla Leonard

“My little girl has taught me one thing,” said a young mother the other day. “She picks out the prettiest things she can find to look at, and then she looks at them, and doesn’t notice the ugly things. The Evanses next door keep their porch in a condition that just depresses me—it’s so cluttered up. But they have some fine geraniums growing in tomato cans, and my little Clara thinks they are beautiful. She hangs over the fence and looks at them, and Mrs. Evans is so pleased at the child’s appreciation that she has actually tidied up the porch once or twice, and Mr. Evans has painted the cans green. I never could have gotten them to do that, because I looked at their porch and was depressed. Clara has done it because she looked at their geraniums and was delighted.”

There is sound philosophy in this bit of experience. The souls that have power, in this world, are the souls that see the right thing—the key to the situation. And as we see only what we look at, our powers in life are strictly proportioned to the way we look at life, and to the things we fix our eyes upon as we go along. No man or woman is ever a failure who sees clearly the essential things. No soul is ever powerless or discouraged except through having looked, momentarily or steadily, at the unessential and misleading things.

In every field of vision, one may as well admit, there are extremely ugly things included in the view. No one who has lived to years of discretion but has seen many things which he would be glad to forget. No intelligent man or woman believes that all men can be trusted, all women admired, or any ideal fully carried out in earthly surroundings. Almost every apple is specked, and every family has a skeleton, even if it no longer has a closet. The world is full of evil and pain and defeat. But that is the worst part of the world. That is the trouble with it—its negative side, its dark background.

There is always a choice of vision, too, even among pleasant things. “I could not live if it were not for my dog!” said a lonely woman in whose little house a handsome, lively spaniel reigned supreme. The dog was a beautiful thing to look at, and his devotion was beautiful, too, to see. But if that very woman had looked over into the next street, she would have found neglected children into whose eyes the same devotion would have sprung, and the same welcome, if she had looked at them and helped them. It is a pitiful thing to see human beings find intimacy with pets more lovely than intercourse with human souls. They are looking at the second-best things instead of the best; and to look at the best things is the secret of true living—living that is always worth while.

As we look at the best things, loving and following them, power enters into us from them—a power not our own, but given to our use. It has been found in even the primary schools that a “gem” of lovely verse taught to a little child keeps that child from temptation and unhappiness in a most surprising way. “I said my gem over, and everything went right,” said one boy to his teacher after an experience of injustice. A noble book kept before the eye of the mind makes life a transformed thing to the soul’s vision. What we look at, that we become. “As seeing Him who is invisible” is the story of that great army of the saints, the martyrs, the heroes, which marches down the ages to the eternal goal—and which we can join if we choose.— Priscilla Leonard.