Do It Yourself

Mr. Vidor is a motion picture director and producer. This article is reprinted by permission from This Week Magazine. Copyright 1958 by the United Newspapers Magazine Corporation.

“The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.”

-William Makepeace Thakeray

 
I had to live a long time before I found the courage to admit to myself that we — all of us — make our own world. The realization came to me in a very simple way. Though I am a Californian, I make frequent trips to New York and I had decided that all New York cab drivers were impatient, bad-tem­pered, or hated their jobs. And hotel employees and railroad per­sonnel were the same. I found them all difficult to get along with.

Then one day in New York I came upon the words from Thack­eray quoted above. The very same day when a “cabbie” and I were snarling at one another, this thought occurred to me —”Could this whole situation be the result of my own thinking and outlook?”

I began to live Thackeray’s idea and soon it became a part of me. The result: on my next trip East, I encountered not one unpleasant taxi driver, elevator operator, or employee! Had New York changed or had I? The answer was clear.

To abandon excuses for one’s own shortcomings is like journey­ing to a distant land where every­thing is new and strange. Here you can’t continue to blame some­one or something else for failures or difficulties; you have to assume the responsibility for them your­self. Of course, outside pressures do influence our lives, but they don’t control them. To assume they do is sheer evasion — it’s so easy to say, “It’s not my fault!”

Since that day in New York I’ve come to believe that this idea is the basis of all human relation­ships. It doesn’t matter whether it is your neighbors, your mother-in-law, or the people of a foreign na­tion. The quickest way to correct the other fellow’s attitude is to correct your own.

Try it. It works. And it adds immeasurably to the fun of meet­ing people and being alive.