AN AIMLESS LIFE by Robert Dale Owen

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jan 8, 1880

AN AIMLESS LIFE.

By Robert Dale Owen

I committed one fatal error in my youth, and dearly have I abided it. I started in life without an object, even without an ambition. My temperament disposed me to ease, and to the full I indulged the disposition. I said to myself, "I have all that I see others contending for—why should I struggle?" I knew not the curse that lights on those who have never to struggle for anything. Had I created for myself a definite pursuit—literary, scientific, artistic, social, political, no matter what, so there was something to labor for and to overcome—I might have been happy. I feel this now—too late! The power is gone. Habits have become chains. Through all the profitless years gone by, I seek vainly for something to remember with pride, or even to dwell on with satisfaction. I have thrown away a life. I feel, sometimes as if there were nothing remaining to me worth living for. I am an unhappy man.—Beyond the Breakers, by Robert Dale Owen.