“They tell us that we are weak, unable to cope. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week or the next year? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction---by lying supinely on our backs hugging the delusive phantom of hope---until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak---if we make a proper use of those means which the God of Nature has placed in our power.” This is a quote from Thomas Payne and because it is late in the day and in order to start this blog I needed to write something, I will let it serve as my my first post and reason for starting this blog (and this sentence will also serve as the first of many run-on sentences).
This quote, however, does speak to me and the title of this blog. We are all filled with ideas and concepts about a better way - "the delusive phantom of hope" (what is delusive?), sitting in our little comfortable worlds of inaction and irresolution. And I say that as only a thin veil to my own life. The enemy seems to be all those people and issues today's world has heaped upon us, yet it is as it has always been - our very selves that bind us hand and foot. I read this particular passage just this year:
"Try as you will you get behind in the race, in spite of yourself. It's an incessant strain to keep pace...and still you lose ground. Science empties its discoveries on you so fast that you stagger beneath them in hopeless bewilderment. Human nature cannot endure much more."
I read that in the book, Time Management for the Creative Person, by Lee Silber, but it was taken from the Atlantic Journal issue on June 16, 1833 (yes, it is 1833).
