I’ve been reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. It connects with MasterKey. In this part, two characters, Dagny Taggart, the novel’s protagonist, and Hank Reardon are having dinner at a restaurant. Both are successful businesspeople, with Taggart a vice president at railroad company Taggart Transcontinental, and Reardon, owner of a metal works company. Taggart just opened a new rail line and Reardon’s metal is highly sought after. Reardon began his career working for others in mines.

While at dinner Reardon, noted all those around them eating, Reardon said,” Dagny, look at those people. They’re supposed to be the playboys of life: the amusement-seekers and luxury-lovers. They sit there, waiting for this place to give them meaning, not the other way around.”

Those sitting around Taggart and Reardon, did not create the world without from within. Thus, they sit, as Reardon said, trying to find meaning from the luxury around them. The world around those serves, then, as a prison.

The story also reminds me of the law of compensation in that the corresponding return to Reardon’s work. He focused on becoming who he wanted to be: an owner of a renowned metal company. He succeeded and attained the means to enjoy eating at a high-end restaurant.

In his essay, Emerson also notes that it is the nature of the soul to appropriate all things and that by “love I conquer and incorporate them in my conscious domain.” Rather than feeling envy or jealously, one should feel love – appreciate – the success of others and learn from that success.

Indeed, OG Mandino notes greeting the day with love, including love of the ambitious for inspiration, leads to success.

Of course, it is sometimes easier to love another than oneself. I think loving oneself is certainly taking care of oneself. But it is also having self-confidence and staying positive. It is celebrating wins. It is not being overly critical of oneself.