Hold On To Your High Ideals

Life Cannot Help Giving Fulfilment to Those Who Turn Their Backs Upon Themselves to Give to Others, to Contribute to Life Without Any Thought for Themselves…

- Eknath Easwaran

Having lived in the world of young people for more than half a century, I have had ample opportunity to observe that there are two driving needs for which there is no provision at all in our modern civilization.

First, our young people have no lofty example, no glorious image of the human being to look up to, nothing higher than the pursuit of personal profit and pleasure.

And, second, there is no soaring ladder by which young people can harness their daring and determination to climb from this low image of human beings as merely physical, fragmented, finite creatures to the magnificent image that has been proclaimed in all the great religions of the world.

The world’s great mystics have made the centuries echo with their clarion call that life is only given to us for one single lofty purpose: to turn inwards and discover – while on earth, while in this life – that no amount of money, no amount of material possessions, no amount of pleasure and prestige will ever satisfy this desperate need for realising the lord of love, who is enthroned in the hearts of all.

The tragedy of lost ideals

When I was teaching English at a great university in India, I had a close relationship with many of my students. They would ask me questions not only about literature but also about many of the problems of life that young people face everywhere. Most of them really wanted to contribute to life, to leave the world a little better than they found it.

Yet many years later, when I would run into them on a train or in a theatre, I was often taken aback – not by the loss of hair which some had undergone, but by the loss of their ideals.