Editorial January 19, 1946 Issue

Mind Your Own Business!

Paul Stark Seeley

In "Alice in Wonderland" Lewis Carroll makes the Duchess say in a hoarse growl, "If everybody minded their own business, the world would go round a great deal faster than it does." Of course he did not wish the speed of the earth's rotation increased, but only that the activities of the human family might be carried on free from the friction of menial meddlesomeness by some in the lives and affairs of others. The Australians have an apt name for one bent on minding the business of others rather than his own. He is called "a sticky beak"!

Often we think that minding our own business means simply not to be nosy about the affairs of others, and to refrain from interfering in the lives of others. It surely means all that, but much more. It has a broad, scientific basis. It means to be what God causes us to be. It means to be constantly mindful of the true idea of God and man. That is, we must be mindful, or conscious, of reality, Truth, the one Mind and Life, and of our true selfhood as united to this one and only Mind. We must realize that man is expressing the thoughts and ideas this Mind causes eternally to unfold in his consciousness and to constitute his life.

Eve was not minding her own business, was not being mindful of the selfhood and status of her only true being, when she listened to the talking serpent of material sense suggesting that she should indulge in the knowledge of evil. Adam, too, failed miserably to mind his business of reflecting God, for the Scriptures say of him. "Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife. ... cursed is the ground for thy sake" (Gen. 3:17). Not but that many men are blessed by listening to their wives and vice versa, yet it is always the business of each individual to be sure that his judgments are in the last analysis, determined by the Mind and intelligence that is the only Ego and God.

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