The Woman You Want to Be, an essay by Margery Wilson
This essay still has relevance today. Margery is not telling women to be meek, but to be what they want, and to never let someone else rule your life. Paragraph three could be for today.
WE DELIBERATELY CHOOSE OUR WAY
Certain psychologists tell us that the mind must agree to death before the body expires, that the nervous woman says to herself, “Now I’ll have hysterics,” or she couldn’t have them, that the high-tempered person decides (however quickly and briefly) within himself to lose his temper and fly into a rage. We must have our own consent before we do anything. This fact is so plain to doctors and scientists that their cure of nervousness and insanity often is based on this knowledge. We must decide what we will manifest in our relation to others in order to live beautifully and harmoniously.
To say, “I could live such a beautiful life if it were not for my family,” is simply “passing the blame.” If you really did live beautifully and uncritically within yourself, you would be lifted up bodily out of the conditions you now condemn, or they would melt miraculously away. That is why I continually urge you to keep your own thoughts so high and fine that you practically do not see the ugly things that exist around you. Like your radio, you will get what you are tuned in to.
In times of national emergency or world demands we are naturally called upon to share the common experience, but even here our individual performance colors the whole matter. Instead of thinking, “What difference does it make now what I do?” we should all think, “What a magnificent opportunity to project my entire strength and expressiveness, creativeness, courage, time and energy, for the benefit of all!” More than ever we need then to accent every personal skill, technique and excellence.
You cannot control the whole universe, cannot have every influence just what you want it to be, but you can control by selection and by acceptance what you will respond to, register, make your own. Realize that the air you are breathing right now is filled with many sounds that you cannot hear, music slow and swift, intense, kind and murderous, screams and groans, happy laughter, the tinkle of ice and crystal at lovely parties, love poems, speeches of all kinds, but your radio picks up only those of its own wave length!
Margery Wilson
The Woman You Want to Be
1928
Certain psychologists tell us that the mind must agree to death before the body expires, that the nervous woman says to herself, “Now I’ll have hysterics,” or she couldn’t have them, that the high-tempered person decides (however quickly and briefly) within himself to lose his temper and fly into a rage. We must have our own consent before we do anything. This fact is so plain to doctors and scientists that their cure of nervousness and insanity often is based on this knowledge. We must decide what we will manifest in our relation to others in order to live beautifully and harmoniously.
To say, “I could live such a beautiful life if it were not for my family,” is simply “passing the blame.” If you really did live beautifully and uncritically within yourself, you would be lifted up bodily out of the conditions you now condemn, or they would melt miraculously away. That is why I continually urge you to keep your own thoughts so high and fine that you practically do not see the ugly things that exist around you. Like your radio, you will get what you are tuned in to.
In times of national emergency or world demands we are naturally called upon to share the common experience, but even here our individual performance colors the whole matter. Instead of thinking, “What difference does it make now what I do?” we should all think, “What a magnificent opportunity to project my entire strength and expressiveness, creativeness, courage, time and energy, for the benefit of all!” More than ever we need then to accent every personal skill, technique and excellence.
You cannot control the whole universe, cannot have every influence just what you want it to be, but you can control by selection and by acceptance what you will respond to, register, make your own. Realize that the air you are breathing right now is filled with many sounds that you cannot hear, music slow and swift, intense, kind and murderous, screams and groans, happy laughter, the tinkle of ice and crystal at lovely parties, love poems, speeches of all kinds, but your radio picks up only those of its own wave length!
Margery Wilson
The Woman You Want to Be
1928
