I believe I'm a very lucky man.
My entire life has been lived in the healthy area between too little and too much.I've never experienced financial or emotional insecurity, but everything I have, I've attained by my own work, not through indulgence, inheritance or privilege.
Never having lived by the abuses of any extreme, I've always felt that a workman is worthy of his hire, a merchant entitled to his profit, an artist to his reward.
As a result of all this, my bargaining bump may be a little underdeveloped, so I've never tried to oversell myself. And though I may work for less than I know I can get, I find that because of this, I'm never so afraid of losing a job that I'm forced to compromise with my principles.
Naturally in a life as mentally, physically, emotionally and financially fortunate as mine has been, a great many people have helped me. A few meant to, most did so by accident.
I still feel I must reciprocate. This doesn't mean that I've dedicated my life to my fellow man. I'm not the type. But I do feel I should help those I'm qualified to help, just as I've been helped by others.
What I'm saying now is, I feel, part of that pattern. I think everyone should, for his own sake, try to reduce to six hundred words the beliefs by which he lives - it's not easy - and then compare those beliefs with what he enjoys - not in real estate and money and goods, but in love, health, happiness and laughter.
I don't believe we live our lives and then receive our reward or punishment in some afterlife. The life and the reward... The life and the punishment - these to me are one. This is my religion, coupled with the firm belief that there is Supreme Being who planned this world and runs it so that "no man is an island, entire of himself..." The dishonesty of any one man subverts all honesty. The lack of ethics anywhere adulterates the whole world's ethical content. In these - honesty and ethics - are, I think, the true spiritual values.
I believe the hope for a thoroughly honest and ethical society should never be laughed at. The most idealistic dreams have repeatedly forecast the future. Most of the things we think of today as hard, practical and even indispensable were once merely dreams.
So I think to hope that the world need not be a dog-eat-dog jungle. I don't think I'm my brother's keeper. But I do think I'm obliged to be his helper. And that he has the same obligation to me.
In the last analysis, the entire pattern of my life and belief can be found in the words "DO NOT do unto others that which you would NOT have others do unto you." To say "Do unto others as you would have others DO unto you" somehow implies bargaining, an offer of favor for favor. But to restrain from acts which you, yourself, would abhor is an exercise in will power that must raise the level of human relationship.
"What is unpleasant to thyself," says Hillel, "THAT do NOT unto thy neighbor. This is the whole law," and he concluded, "All else is exposition."
