You Don’t Know What You’re Missing – Sunday, April 02, 1944
We have all had the experience of being urged to do something against our inclinations, and sometimes against our better judgment, by those who persuasively use the argument: “0, come on and try it! You don’t know what you’re missing!” And, no doubt, many people, old and young alike, have been introduced to some good things and have also been introduced to some undesirable practices and places by this philosophy.
Behind it, of course, is the reasoning that a man doesn’t know whether he likes a thing or not until he has tried it. Sometimes this is true, and, being sometimes true, it may invariably sound like the best of logic until we carry it to some of its so-called logical conclusions, at which point absurdities become apparent; for example, you don’t know what you’re missing if you’ve never been in jail. You don’t know what you’re missing if you’ve never had smallpox. You don’t know what you’re missing if you’ve never fallen from a third-story window. But these are experiences which most of us are agreed we could very well get along without—and so it is with many of the things which others urge us to do which are contrary to our best judgment and the results of which we have seen in the lives of others, and have found them not to be good—even if we don’t know precisely what we are missing.
Sometimes there is found to be harbored a belief that one can’t know what life is all about until it has been sampled rather freely and even promiscuously—the seamy side as well as the good. But to sample the seamy side of life, even in an experimental frame of mind and with no serious intention of falling into false ways, is apt to make an unforgettable impression which may warp our thinking and our judgment forever after, and which may unintentionally lead to habits and practices which are both tenacious and damaging. And so, before we do something foolish or useless or questionable, there should be a much better excuse than merely the argument that we don’t know what we’re missing. This most certainly isn’t a good enough reason. After we do know what we’re missing, it may be too late.
There is a very long list of things that it were much better to have missed, as the lives, and habits, and thoughts, and hearts of those who haven’t missed them eloquently and sometimes tragically testify.
By Richard L. Evans, spoken from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, April 2, 1944, over Radio Station KSL and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System. Copyright – 1944.
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April 02, 1944
Broadcast Number 0,763