The Upkeep of Enthusiasm

^{Originally published in The Way on April 12, 1941.}

Recently we have witnessed a marked decrease in the organizational life of both the older and the younger generation. The elders subscribe this “rest period” to the pathetic turn of affairs abroad. The younger generation doesn’t know “just what to blame.” Things are very still. There is just no enthusiasm.

This is a sad state of affairs, for it indicates a great weakness among us. We are not free, not our own masters, but the slaves of our temperament. We do not control enthusiasm, but enthusiasm controls us.

Enthusiasm is life, it is speed. The person afire with enthusiasm is urgent in thought and speech. His mind is racing. It surveys the present conditions, passes in a flash ten or twenty years back for relevant facts, and then hastens forward with new plans, new devices.

The movements of such a person are in harmony with his mind, but enthusiasm is the possession of the active and not the passive.

A person cannot sit at home in idleness and develop an enthusiasm for any organization. He is much more likely to develop a sluggish preference for idleness. Enthusiasm comes from action, as magnetism comes from friction. The person enthusiastic about an enterprise is not the person looking on at it, but the person who is in it with never a thought or a minute to spare. Enthusiasm is as much the result as the cause of action.

It is true that a person with enthusiasm will put his whole heart into his work, but it is equally true, and more important, that the person putting his whole heart into his work, whatever it may be, will develop and maintain in himself a very great enthusiasm. This is more important because it brings enthusiasm within the control of our will — and that is exactly what we need today.

Immense forces are lost every year in our organizations by the decline of enthusiasm. Young men and women who are eager at the beginning of a movement, grow more and more indifferent as time goes on. This we should watch. For as much of enthusiasm as is the natural gift of youthfulness and temperament, we should be grateful, but for that greater part which is in our own command, we should exert a daily watchfulness. Let us strive to maintain in all we do the highest standard of concentration and resolution, for we know only such creates and keeps enthusiasm. Let us put our whole heart into our service for our Church and our people, our greatest efforts to bring our organization to perfection, for the true source and maintenance of enthusiasm in any cause is service for it.