Texas Gulf Coast Register (Corpus Christi, Tex.), Vol. 11, No. 45, Ed. 1 Friday, March 8, 1968 Page: 4 of 18
eighteen pages : ill. ; page 20 x 14 in.View a full description of this newspaper.
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BETTER THAN BEING ALONE
But whatever sacrifice or pain or difficulty it
takes to bend toward community/ it's worth iff
The alternative is to deny humanity at the selfish
service of personality and individuality. To serve
one's own individuality and nothing else is to be
completely individual/ completely one, completely
alone.
To be completely alone is a lot more painful
than the sacrifice it takes to give one's individual-
ity in service to the community. A iot more pain-
ful. And lonely.
.That's why our faith is said so often in terms
of "The People of God/' "The Mystical Bod/' or
"God's Family." Because there are more than
one; because there's a community; because oth-
ers depend on us and we depend on them. And
fulfillment of one's Christianity depends on the
fulfillment of one's individuality which in turn
depends on the fulfillment of one's humanity. In
other words, there's no such thing as being suc-
cessful, fulfilled or happy unless the whole ball of
wax is there: An individual person working for
others because he is a Christian.
This doesn't mean that everyone ought to
scoot off to a monastery or seminary or convent
or the Peace Corps or VISTA; but it does mean
that, whatever a person does — as a vocation and
a career or a profession — it has to be geared,
not only to himself, but to others.
PLAN!
So you've thought ... thought about what you
are, and about what you can do and accomplish
j|i because you are WHAT you are and WHO you
*** are. So what?
What are you going to do about it?
In order to get from step Number 1 (thinking
about your community relationships) to step
Number 3 (what you're going to do), there's got to
be an intermediate step. The step-in-between
(planning what you're going to do as based on
what you are) should pretty much be filling your
mind and time these days. After all, your future
depends on what you decide.
A lot of people, it seems, have more-or-less
"free floated" into their life's work , . , they "de-
cided," one fine day, that they might as well do
such-and-such as anything else. Perhaps a recrui-
ter from the armed forces or a nursing school
talked to them one day — and the pitch sounded
good — and so the young person decided "Why
not?" And life's direction was taken. Without
thought. Without planning.
You probably know people like that; they're
people who have a job, a career, a vocation, etc.,
and they may even work well at it. But they're
not happy — really happy — with what they're
doing. They're not happy with what they're doing
because they're not fulfilled.
And they're not fulfilled because they didn't
take the time to think and to plan — in other
words, they didn't take the effort to tailor their
future to what they had to work with: Their
humanity and their personality.
That's tragic, in the long run; it constitutes a
kind of infidelity to one's own person. It amounts
to saying: "This is what I can be, this is what I
can do. But what I can be and what I can do
sound like a lot of trouble — maybe even a lot of
sacrifice — I think I'll take the easy way out and
free-float instead."
Page 4
TEXAS GULF COAST REGISTER
Friday, March 8, 1848
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Gough, William. Texas Gulf Coast Register (Corpus Christi, Tex.), Vol. 11, No. 45, Ed. 1 Friday, March 8, 1968, newspaper, March 8, 1968; Denver, Colorado. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth835506/m1/4/: accessed July 8, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .