From Richard L. Evans, his book ‘The Man and the Message:’
If I were seventeen, or even if I had reached the ripe old age of eighteen or nineteen I would remember that in the matter of preparing for life, delays are seldom profitable. I would make a determined and unceasing effort to acquire whatever training I should need for my life’s work without any delay of time and with all speed consistent with my means and opportunities.
Youth is the season for preparation. Maturity is the season for performance. And many of the unsuccessful and disappointed . . . of our day are they who lived unseasonable lives. They have let spring pass by without using the season for its intended purpose, and then, realizing too late the error of neglect, they have tried to do spring’s work in the summer, and summer’s work in autumn, and winter has found them with no harvest. By youth may it be remembered that there are none so hopelessly handicapped as they who have let pass this time of preparation and who go forth to live their lives out of season.
Soon we will realize that the world is no longer waiting for us to prepare for life. It is waiting for us to live it—to face its realities, to solve its problems, to improve its conditions, and to do for the next generation what has been done for us. To youth looking forward, life seems abundantly long, but to age looking back life seems all too short for the realization of things hoped for, for the accomplishment of things desired.
And that is why I say if I were seventeen I would get life’s preparation behind me whether I were to be a doctor, a farmer, a carpenter, or whatever occupation fell to my lot. There is no reason to suppose that the future by some stroke of magic will change essentially from the present, and there is no reason to suppose that while I am now free and unattached and relatively without responsibility that two years or five years from now—when the years have increased upon my head and the burdens increased upon my back—I shall be better prepared for life than I now am.
So much for early preparation. And that brings me to another point, vital and fundamental. If I were seventeen I would not attempt to become something other than that for which I was best adapted. I would not strive to enter a profession in which I was sure to become a misfit. I would not grieve because of talents which I did not possess and be grateful for those which I did possess and make the most of them. I would have the highest regard for physical labor and deep respect for those who can do things as well as they who can think things and plan things.
Our Father who is in heaven did not see fit to distribute the same talents to all men and women—fortunately for the world in which we live. Some can thrill millions with their voices; Some can make the ground to yield abundantly the good things of earth; and some can fashion things of usefulness with the dexterity of their hands. And if I were seventeen I would look at myself honestly and attempt in all sincerity to find out that for which I was best suited. And I would value the skill of those who can create useful things with their hands as much as those who can speak lovely words. . . or think great thoughts. ~ Richard L. Evans, The Man and the Message (Bookcraft, Inc.:Salt Lake City: 1973), 231-32 (continued)
