The Chemawa American
Printed at Chemawa, Oregon, and Devoted to the
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Vol. XXVII
4
MAY
a
ntejrests of Indian Education
COPY ■ 1%6
Wednesday, November 11, 1925
GET IN STEP
Many of us make our daily living miserable by con
tinual grumbling about our environment or surround
ings, our work, our lessons, our associates, our con
dition generally. Now, the trouble is not with our sur
roundings, our work or lessons, our associates, nor
with conditions generally. It lies in the fact that we
do not hold the right mental attitude toward these
things. The trouble lies right within each one of us.
Many people are always in discord with their en
vironment and waste an immense amount of time and
energy in frothing and useless resisting which could be
used in bettering their condition. If you area fretter,
a worrier, always looking on the dark side, you will
finally bring much unhappiness and dissatisfaction on
yourself. Your associates will naturally dislike you
and will show their resentment in all sorts of disa
greeable ways.
If you are cheerful, hopeful, and look on the bright
side in spite of seemingly hard and inhospitable condi
tions, success will come to you, your associates will be
drawn to you and your character and general view of
life will be broadened, stabilized and strengthened.
And what a lot of misery would be avoided also!
No matter in what environment we are compelled to
be we should try to get into harmony with it sufficient
ly to enable us to work smoothly, without friction,
which exhausts and tears down. Friction in the hu
man system is like sand in a piece of machinery which
grinds and wears out bearings. No-one can be happy
or do good work, while holding an antagonistic mental
attitude. The antagonistic people are nearly always
knockers; and knockers are destroyers, not builders.
The person who always looks on the bright side of
things is the builder, the one who holds the right
spirit, the mental attitude that improves conditions
and attracts sympathy and helpfulness from others.
If your work and surroundings are distasteful begin
at once to change by fitting yourself for a better posi
tion or a higher sphere. Antagonizing, worrying, fault
finding, will make matters worse and may be the means
of getting you into a poorer and more uncongenial en
vironment. To go through school fretting, knocking
your environment, your associates, your work or
school duties, is to drive away the very things you de
No. 8
sire to attract. The way to change conditions is to make
friends of them. The non-resistance idea helps you to
economize on your energies. It helps you to do the
things you want to do.
“I am singing my song”
This little quotation expresses, it seems to us, all the
difference between those who have soured on their en
vironment, who are always complaining of their lot,
and look upon their school duties as hateful drudgery,
and those who whatever happens, sing their song and
look upon school life with a cheerful eye and find joy in
their work here.
What you get out of your life at school depends very
largely on how you look at it. Your mental attitude
determines whether you will be happy or miserable—
whether you make it music or discord. Some students
with whom we have come in contact have the faculty
of always touching the wrong key: from a musical in
strument they extract only discord. With them every
thing has an unpleasant appearance. All their songs
are in a minor key. There seems to be nothing bright
or cheerful or beautiful about them. Their outlook is
gloomy, everything about them indicates contraction—
nothing growing or expanding in their lives.
With others it is just the reverse. They cast no
shadows. They radiate sunshine; they never approach
you but in cheer; they never speak to you but to in
spire. They see the best in people and say pleasant
and helpful things about them, and apparently put
their very souls into their school work, school activities
generally, and make any job attractive and lift it to
dignity. Students, if the heart is right we can make
the most trifling thing, the simplest act or duty beau
tiful; but if the heart is not right nothing in life will
be true or fine or uplifting. The one who faces life
in the right way, who is cheerful, hopeful, always
expecting the best to be theirs, will increase their
ability tremendously. Such mental attitude will bring
to us resources which the calamity-howler, the one
who looks on the dark side, loses because his mental
attitude closes his ability to receive instead of opening
it up.
If every one here at Chemawa would pesistently
(Continued on pag-« 4)