Richard L. Evans wrote:
There are times and moments in life when people seem to have arrived at what they want—when the plans and purposes they have pursued seem to have been successful. But this we learn, sooner or later: that life is not a single scene. It is a series of scenes. It is not a portrait or static picture—it is a moving picture and not a matter of any single moment. And just when we think all the pieces are in place, something may happen to change the pattern and the picture, and not a matter of any single moment.
To turn for a moment to history: Napoleon, in the period of his ascendancy, is said to have written a boasting letter concerning the solidness of his situation. But Lord Nelson, in whose hands the letter fell, added a three word postscript: “Mark the end.”[5] Mark the end—and the end of the episode came later with the defeat of Napoleon’s fleet.
“We know what we are,” wrote Shakespeare, but know not what we may be.”[6] One successful scene doesn’t necessarily make a successful plot or a successful play. A play is composed of may parts and is not over until the final curtain—all of which suggest humility as a becoming quality: humility among men, humility before God, for we none of us know when success will sour, when happiness will to turn to sorrow, when health will turn to sickness, when affluence will be altered by accident or adversity.
So changeable is life, so varied are the shifting scenes, that no matter who we are or what we are, or where we have arrived, we none of us know when we shall have need of other men—or need of help beyond the help of men. A smug sense of superiority, inconsideration of others, taking unfair advantage, abusing power, abusing position, all these and many other things unmentioned have often proved to be but the prologue to a different kind of scene and sequence.
The tides of all things turn, and before we can surely say someone is successful, we should know how far and how consistently we can carry success. And before we smugly assume that we are unassailable, we would well remember Nelson’s postscript to the boasting words of Bonaparte:
“Mark the end.” “. . . he that shall endure to the end, the same shall be saved.”[7] God help us to remember that life is not a matter of one scene, but an endless and eternal sequence of scenes. ~Richard L. Evans, From the Crossroads (New York: Harper & Harper, Publishers, 1955), 31-2
5. J. M. Thompson, Napoleon Bonaparte, 32,32
6. Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act IV. sc 5, 31
7. Matthew 24: 13, 32
(Posts with a preamble asterisk * are for a more general audience and not specific to the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.)
