The Come Back

THE COME-BACK


Why not have what you want? Have you settled down with a notion
that you can't get it?

Are you accepting a disappointment as something you must suffer?

Do you look at the thing that you really desire as being far
beyond your reach?

Do you carry around with you a heartache because you think your
heart's desire is finally and forever denied you?

Do you look on yourself as being down and out, with no chance to
get back?

Do you think you are too poor to buy the things you like or even
the things you need?

Have you done something that you think has brought a penalty on
you -- sickness, poverty, loss of freedom, grief?

Well, before you give it all up as hopeless won't you just read
along a little way in this discussion to see if your case is as
bad as you think it is?

I am not writing to sell you anything or to teach you anything or
to persuade you of anything, but just to share with you the ideas
that changed the life of a man who used to think as you do and
who thought he had good reason to think so, but who has found out
that he was mistaken and that life is not hopeless at all; and
who believes that what helped him may help somebody else who is
under a cloud similar to the one that he once lived under.

Many things you want most are now within your reach.

It has been said that if a man were to offer twenty-dollar gold
pieces for sale on the street at fifty cents each, there would be
few buyers, because nearly everybody would leap to the conclusion
that he was a fraud. If you will study the real reason why people
instinctively feel that way, you will find in it the very secret
of success in getting what you want.

You have heard it said a thousand times that "you can't get
something for nothing." You may or may not think that you believe
this to be true, but it is true, whether you believe it or not;
and everybody deep down in his inner nature knows it is true.
That's why he is shy of any promise that promises too much.
That's why you are probably skeptical about the promise of this
little piece of print.

But just let this idea get a foothold in your mind: If it is a
law that I cannot get something for nothing, then it must be true
of this law, as it is of all genuine laws, that it works both
ways; it must be true that I cannot give anything without getting
something for it. Ever think of that?

Have you ever been surprised to find that when you liked or
disliked a man or a woman, that person was sure to return the
feeling you had for or "gave" to him? Have you ever noticed what
a railroad company does that enables it to take in money? It
gives transportation that is needed by people.

Have you ever wondered why Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller are
so rich? Whatever else you may think of them, you must see that
the world gives them money because they give something to the
world -- the one, a good low priced car; the other, good oil at a
reasonable price. What does a department store do before it gets
regular customers? It gives service, courtesy, good will, a
square deal, accommodation, and so forth, to a community, which
brings in the trade as the direct and inevitable result.

What does an employee do before he gets wages or a salary? He
gives a day's work or a week's or a month's. What gets him a
raise? Giving a little more than he is paid for, nothing else.
What does a farmer do before he gets a crop? He gives the seed to
the ground and gives it water and care.

How does an artist or a writer win fame? By giving the world a
work of art or some great literature. How do I win a friend? By
giving him friendship, and in no other way.

Sometimes people say -- and maybe you are one of them just now --
that there are people who get something for nothing; who give
nothing for what they receive. Did you ever study such cases or
do you take somebody else's word for it, as most of us do in such
matters? Well, are you from Missouri?* If you honestly want to be
shown, you are on the only sound ground that there is.

Now, who gets something for nothing? The man who finds an oil
well in his back yard? The woman who marries a rich man? The
miner who stumbles upon gold? The fellow who wins in the lottery?
The thief who takes a purse or the contents of a bank vault? The
swindler who cheats the unwary out of his property? The real
estate shark who sells worthless lots for big prices?

The bootlegger who makes his own liquor with wood alcohol, puts
bogus labels on it, and sells it as "just off the ship?" The
heirs who destroy the old will or forge a new one so that all the
property comes to them? The counterfeiter who makes hundred-
dollar bills out of mere paper and ink? The chap who raises a
thousand-dollar check to $10,000?

Do all-or any-of these get something for nothing? I used to think
they did. Often it looks so.

But the more you watch the individuals who do these things, the
more you'll see that the law works with them just as it works
with you and me. It's law -- just as truly as the law of
gravitation is law -- and I can't break it. Neither can you.
Neither can anybody else.

Did you ever know a gambler who got rich? Did you ever know a
burglar who had anything left after his pals, his fence, and his
lawyers got through with him? Did you ever know a counterfeiter
who had cars and a country home and a yacht? Did you ever know a
woman who married for money and was happy?

"Maybe not," you say, "but they got away with the profits of the
crooked deal!" Did they? How long did the profits last? Do you
know?

Did you ever know anybody to keep the money he won in a lottery?
Did you ever know the "lucky" finder of oil or gold, who hadn't
given something for it, to profit by it?

If you will let go of the rumors and fabulous stories about
riches' coming to people for nothing, and get right down and
investigate, you'll be surprised. Study the history of
"depressions."

What is success in business made of? I mean any success in any
business. Some persons will say, "Hard work." But that is not
always true. Hard work alone will not insure success. You know
plenty of persons who have worked hard but have gotten almost
nothing for it.

Does honesty make success? Not necessarily. Does dishonesty pay?
No! Terribly upsetting, isn't it, to be told that neither
crookedness nor honesty succeeds? Well, that's where you and I
have been making a mistake. We have swung like pendulums from one
extreme to the other. First we've tried to succeed by one method,
then by the other. When crookedness fails, men preach honesty;
when honesty fails, the preachers are dumbfounded and other men
turn bitterly back to crookedness.

What is the reason? Simply that neither mere dishonesty nor mere
honesty pays; nor mere laziness, nor mere hard work. Nothing
really pays but obedience to law -- not man's law but God's law.

Gravitation is one of God's laws, isn't it? Who uses the law of
gravitation? Anybody? Does it make any difference whether he is
good or bad, honest or dishonest, crooked or straight, saint or
sinner, rich or poor, fat or lean, white or black? It does not;
the law of gravitation works for him infallibly, invariably,
inflexibly, eternally, regardless of who or what he is.

Who uses the laws governing the burning of gasoline to drive a
car? Who uses the laws of friction to stop a car? Who uses the
laws of electricity? the laws of light? Does it make any
difference whether one is handsome or homely, whether he is
freckled or pallid, whether he smokes or drinks or swears or goes
to church or tights or steals or kills or loves?

It does not. A murderer can drive a car or stop it. A clown can
ride in an airplane. A fool can start or stop a dynamo. An idiot
can set a fire. A preacher or a moron can explode dynamite. A
sister of charity or a woman of the street will burn a hand on a
hot stove. Good or bad, saintly or vicious -- law works alike for
all, and everything works under law.

But some laws seem to be greater than others, to include others,
to transcend others. For instance, the laws controlling the
airplane seem to enable it to break the law of gravitation. Of
course, they don't; they simply enable us to counteract the force
of gravitation. The laws of the radio release us from conditions
to which we have thought ourselves limited by other governing
laws -- laws of sound transmission.

By studying these things I see that so soon as I begin working by
any law I begin to benefit by it, and no other law can stop me;
because all the laws of nature fit together, work together, help
one another -- they never work against one another. The law of
gravitation helps me to use the airplane, it holds me down
against the air. If it did not, I'd be flung off the world into
space, airplane and all -- not to mention other things that would
happen.

When I start my car, the laws governing the action of the engine
seem to overcome the laws of inertia and friction -- but no law
is broken. If it weren't for inertia there would be no momentum;
if it weren't for friction my clutch would not grip and my tires
would not take hold of the road. I do not break laws; I use them.

Now, a law that works at all always works. You say conditions
affect laws? No; fog, for instance, only obscures the light of
the stars to my eyes -- the stars still shine. Static interferes
with the radio only as it obscures the broadcasting for me; the
broadcasting is there just the same.

Law always works -- anywhere -- everywhere -- now and forever.
Two and two make four, by mathematical law, in New York or Kansas
City, in Paris or Tokyo, in the cathedral or the prison, in the
home or the dive, on earth or Mars, today or in Caesar's time,
now or in eternity.

If this law that I cannot get something for nothing, and that
therefore I cannot give without receiving, is law, then it works
with the same infallibility and continuity as all other laws. It
makes no difference who I am, where I am, how much I weigh, what
color my hair is, or what my character is, this law works for me
just the same. It is commonly called the law of giving and
receiving, and it can be stated this way: What I give out comes
back to me -- multiplied -- always. The "Come-back" is like the
yield from seed.

Now, if you agree so far, don't you see where this has led you?
It has led you to recognize that you are where you are today
because of what you have given out. You are getting it back
multiplied, just as I'm getting mine.

But what else does it mean?

It also means that what you start giving out now is also going to
start coming back to you -- multiplied. You can change the crop
you are reaping, but there's just one way to do it: you can
change the seed you are planting -- change the sort of thing you
are giving out. I did. It works, and nobody can stop it; nothing
can stop it, no circumstance, no apparent handicap, no apparent
misfortune, no "bad luck," no enemy, nobody who "has it in for
you."

What you give out comes back to you -- what you begin giving out
begins coming back to you. Any man, woman, or child can transform
his life by transforming the thing he gives out.

Of course the first question that comes up in your mind (it was
the first in my mind) is "How long must I suffer for what I've
already done?" That's an interesting point. Suppose we think a
minute about law: If I am working a problem in arithmetic, and I
have been getting the wrong answer over and over and over again;
and if I suddenly find that I've been trying to work the problem
by the wrong method -- contrary to principle -- in opposition to
law; and if I stop going contrary to law and work with law, how
long does it take me to get the right answer?

Suppose I am learning to drive a car, and I try to start it by
stepping on the gas without shifting into gear; the car does not
start. But when I shift into gear -- in other words obey the law
governing the case -- and then "step on the gas," how long does it
take the car to start? Suppose I have a boat with a hole in it; I
find that when I put it into the water, it fills and sinks.
Suppose that I obey the law governing boats, and stop the leak;
how long does it take the boat to float?

If I am locked in a room and don't know how to unlock the door, I
stay there till I learn how, do I not? But when I learn how to
turn the key in that lock, how soon do I get out?

You may think out as many other examples as you like of how law
works for you the moment you begin to obey it, of how obedience
now cancels the mistakes of yesterday, or of last year. Then come
back to our argument and think this one over: So true and
far-reaching and fundamental is this law of giving and receiving
that it extends into our thoughts.

There's a lot of talk these days about the power of thought, and
some persons are disposed to sneer at it. But there's more in it
than these persons suppose, and they suffer because they don't
realize the power of thought. It is true, too, that what you
think comes back to you, multiplied.

Is there a laugh in that for you? Well, can you do anything
without first thinking about it? Is any discovery or invention,
any work of art or book, any newspaper or tool, any manufacturing
or any crime, any deed good or bad ever performed without some
one's first thinking about it?

In other words, everything that you do is first an idea in your
mind. That is where it is first "created." If you make a chair,
or a plan, or a steamship, or a printing press, or a bomb, or a
broom, it must first take shape in your mind, as an idea. As a
matter of fact, the idea of a thing is the real creation of it;
the physical putting it together afterward is a mere copy of the
idea in your mind.

We are accustomed to think that a certain amount of time and
energy is required to make the visible copy of the idea -- the
visible chair, or plow, or broom. But the more perfectly we think
it out -- that is, create it as a complete idea in mind -- the
more quickly and perfectly we can create it in visible form; and
as we think it out better and better, we find that we require
less and less time to make the visible thing -- and less and less
energy.

Newly invented machines, for instance, are usually crude,
cumbersome, heavy, and require a lot of power to operate them.
But as they are perfected -- that is, as they are thought out --
they become lighter, simpler, more efficient, are operated by
less power, and do their work more quickly. In this process the
time always comes when the thing that once took a long period and
much labor to make is made at a speed so high that the production
is in some cases almost instantaneous.

If, when we began making this thing we had
understood all the laws of its making, we
could have made it instantaneously without
going through the process of learning how.

But that would have been a miracle!

Exactly!

The difference between what we call a natural process and what we
call a miracle is largely a matter of the time required to reach
the desired end. But doing a "miracle" is merely a matter of
understanding the laws by which it is done. The first Ford car
required months of grueling labor to build; today the Ford plants
can make about five and one half cars a minute -- or one about
every ten seconds. Is that a miracle? Wouldn't it have been a
miracle to produce a Ford every ten seconds, say thirty years
ago? What makes it possible today? Knowledge of the laws.

Knowledge of the laws involved in anything is not only the most
valuable knowledge that we can have but it is absolutely
essential. Mr. Ford never would have made a car if he had started
with no knowledge of the law. But he began by using what he had
-- probably by using something that he had been told, or had
read, about the laws of mechanics. As he used the knowledge that
he had, his knowledge grew -- just as your muscle grows as you
use it -- or as intelligence grows by use -- or anything else.

And wouldn't Henry Ford have been foolish not to try out his
first bits of knowledge about law?

Think this over and you'll see that anything men ever achieve is
accomplished by knowledge of the law. Health, wealth, happiness,
success, prosperity, freedom! Anything you want literally will
come to you if you will obey its laws just as literally as you
obey the law of gravitation.

Now, of course you see the direction of this argument. A man's
work or a woman 's work is not primarily to do something hard
that brings the sweat, breaks the nails, tires the muscles, and
exhausts the wind -- something that is drudgery. Not at all. The
secret of getting what you want lies in obeying the law governing
getting what you want.

What is that law? Why, it is just what we've been talking about
-- the law of giving and receiving.

Now, what is your first thought at this suggestion? You think,
"What have I to give?" Perhaps you conclude that you have
nothing.

But Henry Ford had nothing -- at the start -- nothing but an
idea. Heinz, the pickle man, of "fifty-seven varieties" fame, had
nothing at the start--nothing but an idea. Sam Walton, the
Wall Mart store man, had nothing at the start-nothing but
an idea. Golden Rule Nash, the tailor, who built a business up
from nothing to $12,000,000 in six years, had nothing at the
start -- nothing but an idea.

But the curious thing about it is that these men all had the same
idea. What was it? It was the idea of giving the world something
that it needed -- something of value. When they began acting on
the idea by giving what they had to begin with, they learned how
to give more, and so received more; and when they gave that, more
came -- until every one of them reached the point where he was
successful and famous, and money rolled in upon him faster than
he could use it.

It will work for you -- this law. It has worked for me. It is
working for you and for me whether we know it or not -- whether
we believe it or not. What you give out comes back to you --
multiplied. If you don't get what you want, it's nobody's fault
but your own. If I don't get what I want, it's nobody's fault but
mine. The law works.

If it works for me slowly at first, that is because I must learn
by giving what I have, before I can get more knowledge of the law
and thus have more to give. But if I will give what I have, where
I am, to someone who needs it, I'll gain the knowledge and the
things that I need.

As I go on giving, I rapidly rise toward the point where I shall
do easily and instantaneously the thing that now takes me a long
time to do -- just as my hand gains skill and speed and ease with
a hammer, or a drill, or a needle, or a baseball, or a boxing
glove, or a hoe, or a tennis racket, or a camera, or a motor car,
or a dynamo. Eventually, by using all the knowledge I have of
law, in giving service to the world, I shall gain the ability to
do seeming miracles -- as Henry Ford, Ty Cobb, William Tilden,
Barney Oldfield, Mary Pickford, Thomas Edison, and Luther Burbank
have done.

If you believe that the foregoing argument is sound, has it
occurred to you that the conclusion is not new? It's at least as
old as the year 33 A. D. In other words, it has been taught to
the world more or less ever since the time of Jesus. In fact it
was and is His teaching. Many people overlook the real teaching
of Jesus of Nazareth. But listen: Didn't He say, "Give and it
shall be given unto you, good measure, pressed down, shaken
together and running over?"

Whatever you think about Him religiously, did He know what He was
talking about? Did He state a law?

We believe that Jesus of Nazareth did not merely found a
religion, but that He taught a way to live -- to live happily,
successfully, prosperously. Didn't He say, "I came that ye may
have life, and may have it abundantly?" In other words, He taught
not merely a way to be good and moral and honest and industrious
and all that, but a way to live by the law that brings success
and money and fame and love and all the other things that we
want.

And the law He taught was give -- and give first -- if you want
to get anything. He voiced the Golden Rule "Whatsoever ye would
that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." The wisest of
the world's cynics say that you have to pay sometime for whatever
you get. Jesus of Nazareth says, practically, "Pay as you enter."
Select what you want, and pay first.

Maybe this sounds impracticable to you. It did to me. But try it
out. I did. You'll get results. I did. It won't fail you. It
hasn't failed me. Why?

Because there is just one maker of law in the universe and that
is the power we call God, and that power made the law of giving
and receiving. Give the best you have and look for the best in
return. God challenges you and me to prove the promises He makes
in the Bible, and these promises are simply statements of law
that never fail of fulfillment."Prove me now," says God,
"whether I will not open the windows of heaven and pour you out a
blessing greater than ye are able to receive." His only condition
is that we shall "give first" -- that's all.

Commonly we do not take this sort of promise seriously; but it is
sound and true. Is there anything wrong about the foregoing
argument? God is the law. He is the law of love, which is only
another name for the law of giving and receiving. If you will
stop thinking of God as a joke, or as a terror, or as a myth, or
as a dream, or as something far off and outside everyday life,
and will think of Him as the Maker of the law of gravitation and
of the law of love, one of which is just as real as the other --
you'll get somewhere.

If you want to know how, the whole secret lies in beginning. The
way to do it is to do it. Right where you are, now, begin to give
something good to the person nearest to you, and keep on doing
it, no matter what you seem to get back at first. Do! Don't talk!
And you'll lift yourself out of your troubles, no matter what
they seem to be or how deeply you seem to be sunk in them.

Try it. You'll be surprised. I was. Try it as patiently and as
hard as you would try to get a drink of water if you were very
thirsty. You'll get a return, a reward, that you don't even dream
of yet. You will! Don't let anybody fool you about it.

And besides, if it doesn't work, you don't have to keep on with
it. But you will keep on -- if you give it a fair chance to prove
itself. Because -- it works.


*********

Isn't that great? I hope you enjoyed it and will take its message
to heart.
God Bless. Your Friend.
John Baca

http://www.12secondcommute.com/affiliate/affiliate_tools/splashpage/bacpro.html"