Text of the meditation
A sweet and happy soul is the ripened fruit of experience and wisdom. There is an infinite patience in nature that it is profitable to contemplate. A comet may take a thousand years to complete its orbit; the sea may take ten thousand years to wear away the land; the complete evolution of the human race may take millions of years.
This should make us ashamed of our hurry, fussiness, discontent, disappointments, and ridiculous self-importance over the trifling things of an hour or a day. Patience is conducive to the highest greatness, the most far-reaching usefulness and the profoundest peace.
Without it, life will lose much of its power and influence, and its joy will be largely destroyed. "So with well-ordered strenuousness, raise your structure of Success." Whoever fills the minutes with useful pursuits as they come and go grows old in honour and wisdom, and prosperity abides with them.
James Allen (1864–1912), Book of Meditations for Every Day in the Year (1913) – public-domain text, gently modernised.
The original 1913 text is in the public domain.
