You are reading a page from Life Insurance as a Life Work, by Hugh Hart
(1926)
Part of the American Term Life Insurance History Project
Term Life Insurance
CHAPTER I
THE CHOICE OF A LIFE WORK
Sad is the day for any man, when he becomes abso-
lutely satisfied with the life he is living, the thoughts
he is thinking and the deeds he is doing; when there
ceases to be forever beating at the doors of his soul a
desire to do something larger, which he knows and
feels it was intended that he should do.—PfflLLiPS
BROOKS.
Not long ago I sat in the private office
of a very successful banker, while a business
man was trying to persuade the banker to
invest five thousand dollars in a certain
project. The loss of five thousand dollars
would scarcely have made a dent in the
banker's large fortune. It was very inter-
esting, therefore, to observe the tremendous
amount of pains the banker took to obtain
all possible information about the proposed
investment. He asked questions, one after
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LIFE INSURANCE AS A LIFE WORK
another, with Gatling gun rapidity for more
than an hour, each question having a vital
bearing on some phase of the proposal. He
was apparently interested as much in the
adverse as in the favorable features of the
plan. Even at the end of this exhaustive
examination of the merits and defects of
the project, the banker informed the busi-
ness man that he would give his decision
two days later, after further investigation.
I learned this lesson from that experience:
no investment should ever be made unless
the investor has first carefully considered
in detail the unfavorable and favorable as-
pects of the proposed venture.
This weighing of advantages and disad-
vantages is the process upon which you are
about to enter in making the choice of your
life work. You are thinking of making
an investment that is of ten thousand
times more importance to you than was the
five thousand dollar proposition which the
banker so carefully considered; for you are
planning to make an investment of your
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THE CHOICE OF A LIFE WORK
life. Indeed, the decision as to how you
are going to invest your life, which is but
another way of saying the choice of your
life work, is one of the two or three most
far-reaching decisions that you have ever
been, or will ever be called upon to make.
The reasons are obvious. In the first place,
you have but one life to invest, for a lost
life cannot be lived over again. Moreover,
not only yourself, but others, will be vitally
affected by the outcome of your life invest-
ment—your wife, children, friends, those
who have a pride and interest in your
career, as well as a larger audience, many of
them unknown to you, will be affected bene-
ficially or otherwise by the work you do, or
fail to do.
The great importance of your decision as
to what your life work is to be, may, with
added emphasis, be brought home to you by
calling to your attention the fact that many
failures are attributable to the selection of
the wrong vocation. Some men ar6 fortu-
nate in discovering early in life the vocation
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LIFE INSURANCE AS A LIFE WORK
in which they belong; others go through th
harrowing experience of finding themselves
either through choice or circumstances, er
gaged in work for which they are no
adapted and in which they are, therefon
probably doomed to failure. Some mer
throughout life, are thus enmeshed in a net
work of tasks for which they have no fitnes
and the longer they stay, the more difficul
it is for them to extricate themselves.
The fact that a man is a failure in one lini
of work does not by any means imply tha
there is not some other business, or profes
sion, in which he might successfully engage
History is full of examples of men who
failing in a type of work for which the;
were not suited, changed to another anc
succeeded. There are the classic example'
of Lincoln, who was unsuccessful as a mer-
chant, but who became President of th(
"United States; of Patrick Henry, who made
a complete failure as a business man, but
who was a splendid statesman; and of
Grant, who was not able to run a tannery
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THE CHOICE OF A LIFE WORK
but whose name will go down in history as a
remarkable general.
Quite often the difference between the
successful and the unsuccessful man is to be
found in this fact: the man who ultimately
succeeded discovered that he was expending
his energy in a line of effort in which he
could make no progress, and, therefore, had
the good sense, as well as the courage, to
change to a vocation that seemed more con-
genial; whereas the man who never suc-
ceeded, supinely remained where he was.
Then there is the obligation which the
very possession of life with its accompany-
ing talents and opportunities imposes—an
obligation which cannot be satisfactorily
discharged unless that life yields from its
investment the maximum dividends of use-
fulness.
The story is told of a locomotive engineer
who suddenly became demented. While in
his delirium he uncoupled his engine from
the long train of cars that it had been pull-
ing and tied a small baby carriage, which he
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LIFE INSURANCE AS A LIFE WORK
found at the railway station, to the rear of
the locomotive, then started the locomotive.
Soon the engine was going full speed down
the track, dragging behind it, not the cus-
tomary line of heavily-loaded freight cars,
but the frail little baby carriage. It was
pathetic to observe that tremendous engine
applying its mighty speed and power in
pulling so fragile a burden and engaged in
such futile work. It is one of life's pro-
foundest tragedies, however, that many a
human being, possessing undreamed of pos-
sibilities, is tied down to a vocation in which
there is an almost total misapplication of his
talents.
The ambitionless man, the man in whose
soul there is no instinctive urge to make his
life count, will not find his slumber dis-
turbed at night by comparing what he is
accomplishing with what he might accom-
plish. On the other hand, he who has
within himself that spirit of conquest which
constitutes the motive power of every man
who accomplishes anything worth while in
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THE CHOICE OF A LIFE WORK
life, is restlessly unhappy in a form of
existence wherein the larger part of his time
must be given to tasks that are inferior to
his powers. A healthful discontent in a
misfit of this kind bespeaks the potentially
successful man. He should look about for
the vocation wherein he can measure up,
more fully, to his possibilities, and thus dis-
cover both happiness and success.
You should not make any investment of
your life unless you intend it to be a per-
manent investment. No banker will invest
in a security because it offers a temporary
profit, if it gives promise of an eventual
loss; nor will he buy a security of doubtful
value simply because it is convenient to ob-
tain. Securities that are hard to obtain
are often most profitable and again those
which yield the smallest return in the be-
ginning, as a rule, are the safest in the long
run.
One danger of making an investment
without considering future returns is that
a temporary investment may eventually be-
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LIFE INSURANCE AS A LIFE WORK
come permanent. Pick out some old man
who has spent his life clerking in a store,
and ask him if he began his work as a clerk
with the deliberate intention of always re-
maining a clerk. The chances are he will
tell you that he started with the idea of re-
maining in that work only for a short time;
that he took the job because it was easy to get
and because it promised larger immediate
returns than he could obtain in any other
work. He slipped into a rut, however, and
stayed there. Some other vocation would
have been more congenial perhaps, but the
longer he remained behind the counter, the
more difficult it became for him to change.
It is of relatively slight importance what
your situation is now. What your situa-
tion will be ten, twenty, or thirty years from
now is the thing that really counts. Some
vocations lead nowhere, and yet young men
who might go a long way in life are con-
tinually entering and remaining in these so-
called "blind-alley jobs."
In choosing a vocation in which to invest
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THE CHOICE OF A LIFE WORK
your life, you should direct your thought to
the following considerations:
1. What are the pitfalls in the proposed
vocation ?
2. What are its opportunities?
3. How would my temperament, ambi-
tion, ability, and character adapt
themselves to the vocation ?
You owe it to yourself, to your family, to
society, and to your Maker to enter upon
life's great adventure in quest of that work
for which you are best fitted and which will
yield the largest dividends of service and
satisfaction. Having found your proper
work, you will have found happiness; on its
foundation you can erect not a hovel of bare
existence, but the firm enduring structure of
a career. Into its building you can throw
yourself with all the pride and consecration
of an architect, conscious that you are con-
structing not upon the sand, but upon the
dependable granite of permanence and
stability.
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