Having What Others Have

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 12, 1916

Having What Others Have

We all know that the desire to have what others have causes more ruin than almost any other social instinct. We must go where others go, we must do what others do, we must dress like others, we must eat like others, we must travel like others. How often we do things quite indifferent to our own tastes and wishes simply because others do them!

This tyranny of the notion of others is especially marked in a democratic society, where every one is striving to get up in the world, and to have his wife get up in the world, and to have her show it by dressing and entertaining as others do, or a little better.

Most of all are we anxious not to have our children in any way outdone by the children of others. If Maude next door takes violin lessons at five dollars a lesson, our Gladys must pay five, or six. If Maude’s brother, Jim, has a motor cycle, our Tom also must have one. The process too often lands Gladys and Tom in the poorhouse, where, to be sure, they will find a good many others—only they are not the others we wish to imitate. Therefore, prudent and thrifty parents never tire of counseling their children, “Do not consider what others have. Govern your outlay by your income, and have only those things that you can decently afford. By far the most precious and least-imitable thing that others—a few others—have, is complete independence.” Parents of that type often deny their children what they could easily afford simply to root out the everlasting disposition to copy the tastes and the expenditure of others.

The principle may be carried too far and cause huge unhappiness, that unhappiness of a child which is huge in its desolation, however trivial it may appear to those who are older and wiser. Do not let your child be servilely imitative

of others, but do not let him—and still more her—be odd, be different, be out of touch with his little world in those minor things that count more for success in life than many persons realize. When you buy a new toy or a new implement of sport, buy one that will be right, not one that perhaps costs a few cents less and that will be mocked at with the bitter mockery that children practice and feel. You were young once yourself. Go right back there and try to save your children some of the unnecessary misery that you felt. There will be enough necessary misery that you cannot save them.

As the main rule of life, having what others have is pitiful. As a correction for individual oddities and little tactless awkwardnesses, it is a most useful guide and not to be neglected.—Selected.