18/100 Concentration

18. Concentration

In this day, when so many things are clamoring for attention, the first law of success may be said to be concentration. It is impossible to be successful in every branch of business, or renowned in every department of a professional life. We must learn to bend our energies to one point, and to go directly to that point, looking neither to the right nor to the left. It has been said that a great deal of the wisdom of a man in this century is shown in leaving things unknown, and a great deal of his practical ability in leaving things undone. The day of universal scholarships is past. Life is short, and art is long. The range of human wisdom has increased so enormously that no human brain can grapple with it, and the man who would know one thing well must have the courage to be ignorant of a thousand other things, however attractive or interesting. As with knowledge, so with work. The man who would get along must single out his specialty, and into that must pour the whole stream of his activity—all the energies of his hand, eye, tongue, heart, and brain. Broad culture, many-sidedness, are beautiful things to contemplate; but it is the narrow-edged men—the men of one single and intense purpose—who steel the soul against all things else, that accomplish the hard work of the world.

The great men of every age who have had the arduous task to shape human destiny have been men of one idea impelled by resolute energy. Take those names that are historic, and, with the exception of a few great creative minds, you find them to be men who are identified with some one achievement upon which their life force was spent. The great majority of men must concentrate their energies upon the complete mastery of some one profession, trade, or calling, or they will experience the disappointment of those whose empire has been lost in the ambition of universal conquest. A man may have the most dazzling talents, but if they are scattered upon many objects he will accomplish nothing. Strength is like gunpowder: to be effective it needs concentration and aim. The marksman who aims at the whole target will seldom hit the center. The literary man or philosopher may revel among the sweetest and most beautiful flowers of thought, but unless he gathers or condenses these in the honeycomb of some great thought or work, his finest conceptions will be lost or useless.

The world has few universal geniuses who are capable of mastering a dozen languages, arts, or sciences, or driving a dozen callings abreast. Beginners in life are perpetually complaining of the disadvantages under which they labor; but it is an indisputable fact that more persons fail from a multiplicity of pursuits and pretensions than from a poverty of resources. "The one prudence in life," says a shrewd American essayist, "is concentration, the one evil is dissipation; and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine, property and its cares, friends and a social habit, politics, music, or feasting. Every thing is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more, and drives us home to add one stroke of faithful work." The gardener does not suffer the sap to be driven into a thousand channels merely to develop a myriad of profitless twigs. He prunes the branches, and leaves the vital juices to be absorbed by a few vigorous, fruit-bearing branches.

While the highest ability accomplishes but little if scattered on a multiplicity of objects, on the other hand, if one has but a thimbleful of brains, and concentrates them upon the thing he has in hand, he may achieve miracles. Momentum in physics, if properly directed, will drive a tallow candle through an inch board. Just so will oneness of aim and the direction of the energies to a single pursuit, while all others are waived, enable the veriest weakling to make his mark where he strikes. The general who scatters his soldiers all about the country insures defeat; so does he whose attention is diffused through innumerable channels, so that it can not gather in force on any one point. The human mind, in short, resembles a burning-glass, whose rays are intense only as they are concentrated. As the glass burns only when its rays are converged to a focal point, so the former illumes the world of science, literature, or business only when it is directed to a solitary object. What is more powerless than the scattered clouds of steam as they rise to the sky? They are as impotent as the dew-drop that falls nightly upon the earth; but concentrated and condensed in a steam boiler they are able to cut through solid rock, to hurl mountains into the sea, and to bring the antipodes to our doors.

It is the lack of concentration and wholeness which distinguishes the shabby, half-hearted, and blundering—the men who make the mob of life—from those who win victories. In slower times success might have been won by the man who gave but a corner of his brain to the work in hand, but in these days of keen competition it demands the intensest application of the thinking faculty. Exclusive dealings in worldly pursuits is a principle of hundred-headed power. By dividing his time among too many objects, a man of genius often becomes diamond dust instead of diamond. The time spent by many persons in profitless, desultory reading would, if concentrated upon a single line of study, have made them masters of an entire branch of literature or science. Distraction of pursuits is the rock upon which most unsuccessful persons split in early life. In law, in medicine, in trade, in the mechanical professions the most successful persons have been those who have stuck to one thing. Nine out of ten men lay out their plans on too vast a scale, and they who are competent to do almost any thing do nothing, because they never make up their minds distinctly as to what they want or what they intend to be.

We are often compelled to a choice of acquisitions, for there are some things the possession of which is incompatible with the possession of others, and the sooner this truth is known and recognized the better the chances of success and happiness. Much material good must be resigned if we would attain the highest degree of moral excellence, and many spiritual joys must be foregone if we resolve at all risks to win great material advantages. To strive for a high personal position, and yet expect to have all the delights of leisure; to labor for vast riches, and yet to ask for freedom from anxiety and care, and all the happiness which flows from a contented mind; to indulge in sensual gratifications, and yet demand health, strength, and vigor; to live for self, and yet to look for the joys that spring from a virtuous and self-denying life—is to ask for impossibilities.

If you start for success you must expect to pay its price. It can not be won by feeble, half-way efforts, neither is it to be acquired because sought for in a dozen different directions. It demands that you bring to your chosen profession or calling energy, industry, and, above all, that singleness of purpose which is willing to devote the energies of a life-time to its accomplishment. Mere wishing and sighing brings it not. Many little calls of society on your time must pass unheeded. You can not expect to live tranquilly and at your ease, but to be up and doing, with all your energies devoted to the one point kept constantly in view. Cultivate this habit of concentration if you would succeed in business; make it a second nature. Have a work for every moment, and mind the moment's work. Whatever your calling, master all its bearings and details, all its principles, instruments, and applications. We have so much work ahead of us that must be done if we would reach the point desired that we must save our strength as much as possible. Concentration affords a great safe-guard against exhaustion. He who scatters himself on many objects soon loses his energy, and with his energy his enthusiasm—and how is success possible without enthusiasm?

It becomes, then, of importance to be sure we have started right in the race for distinction. Every beginner in life should strive early to ascertain the strong faculty of his mind or body fitting him for some special pursuit, and direct his utmost energies to bring it to perfection. There is no adaptation or universal applicability in man; but each has his special talent, and the mastery of successful men is in adroitly keeping themselves where and when that turn shall need oftenest to be practiced.

Though one must be wholly absorbed to win success, still singleness of aim by no means implies monotony of action; but if we would be felt on this stirring planet, if we would strike the world with lasting force, we must be men of one thing. Having found the thing we have to do we must throw into it all the energies of our being, seeking its accomplishment at whatever hazard or sacrifice. But that does not prevent us from participating in the enjoyments of life. If you are sent on business to some foreign land, though bent on business, still you can admire, as you hurry along, the beautiful scenery from the car windows; you can note the strange places through which you pass; you can observe the wondrous sublimity of the ocean without being distracted from the main objects of your travels. So it is not to be inferred from what has been said that concentration means isolation or self-absorption. There may be a hundred accessories in life, provided they contribute to one result.

In urging the importance of concentration, and of sticking to one thing, we do not mean that any man should be a mere lawyer, a mere doctor, or a mere merchant or mechanic, and nothing more. These are cases of one-sidedness pushed too far. There is no more pitiable wreck than the man whose one giant faculty has drowned the rest. Man dwarfs himself if he pushes too far the doctrine of the subdivision of labor. Success is purchased too dear if to attain it one has subordinated all his faculties and tastes to one master passion, and become transformed into a head, a hand, or an arm, instead of a man. Every man ought to be something more than a factor in some grand formula of social or economical science, a cog or pulley in some grand machine.

Let every one take care, first of all, to be a man, cultivating and developing, as far as possible, all of his powers on a symmetrical plan; and then let him expend his chief labors on the one faculty, which nature, by making it prominent, has given a hint should be especially cultivated. There is, indeed, no profession upon which a high degree of knowledge will not continually bear. Things which, at first glance, seem most remote from it will often be brought into close approximation to it, and acquisitions which the narrow-minded might deem a hindrance will sooner or later yield something serviceable. Nothing is more beautiful than to see a man hold his art, trade, or calling in an easy, disengaged way, wearing it as the soldier does his sword, which, once laid aside, the accomplished soldier gives you no hint that he has ever worn. Too often this is not the case, and the shop-keeper irresistibly reminds you of the shop, and the scholar, who should remind you that he has been on Parnassus only by the odors of the flowers he has crushed, which cling to his feet, affronts you with a huge nosegay stuck in his bosom.

One can make all his energies bear on one important point and yet show himself a man among men by his interest in matters of public concern. He can endear himself to the community by kindly acts to the distressed, as well as completely mastering, in all its bearings, the one great work which he has taken upon himself as his life's work. Then take up your task. Remember that you must marshall all your forces at one point, and move in one direction, if you would accomplish what your desires have painted; but also remember that you are a human being, and not a machine, and that as you pass on the journey of life you should, as far as possible, without insuring defeat, take note of the wonders which nature has spread before you, should ponder on what history says of the past, should muse over the solemn import of life, and thus, while winning laurels for your brow, and achieving your heart's desire, develop in you the faculties which go to make, in its complete meaning, a man or woman.