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Do You Act, Or React?
–Condensed from an article by Sidney J. Harris in the Chicago Daily News

I walked with a friend, a Quaker, to the newsstand the other night,
and he bought a paper, thanking the newsboy politely.
The newsboy didn’t even acknowledge it.



“A sullen fellow, isn’t he?” I commented.
“Oh, he’s that way every night,” shrugged my friend.
“Then why do you continue to be so polite to him?”
“Why not?” inquired my friend.
“Why should I let him decide how I’m going to act?”



As I thought about this incident later, it occurred to me that the important word was
“act.” My friend acts toward people; most of us react toward them. He has a sense of
inner balance which is lacking in most of us; he knows who he is, what he stands for,
how he should behave. He refuses to return incivility for incivility, because then he
would no longer be in
command of his own conduct.



Nobody is unhappier than the perpetual reactor. His center of emotional gravity is
not rooted within himself, where it belongs, but in the world outside him. His
temperature is always being raised or lowered by the social climate around him, and he
is a mere creature at the mercy of these elements.


Praise gives him a feeling of euphoria, which is false, because it does not last and it does
not come from self–approval. Criticism depresses him more than it should, because it
confirms his own secretly shaken opinion of himself. Snubs hurt him, and the merest
suspicion of unpopularity
in any quarter rouses him to bitterness.



Serenity cannot be achieved until we become the masters of our own actions and
attitudes. To let another determine whether we shall be rude or gracious, elated or
depressed, is to relinquish control over our own personalities, which is ultimately all we
possess.


The only true possession is self-possession.



We all should all take some meaning from this literature and figure out ourselves. These values are what I believe in as a Sigma Chi. So I will be adding new literature often because I would like to show you all what my morals are and hope to teach you the morals that you could have. I know most of you already have these morals, but I hope that these will get to the one person that really needs it.

In Hoc Signo Vinces
(In This Sign You Will Conquer)


Mayor Fawkes

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