You Don’t Know What You’re Missing! – Sunday, February 4, 1951
It is possible that most of us have been persuaded to proceed against our better judgment, by those who urge us on with the argument: “You don’t know what you’re missing!” And, no doubt, in any people, both old and young, have been introduced to some desirable things as well as to many undesirable things by this philosophy: “You don’t know what you’re missing.”
Behind it, of course, is the reasoning that a person 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 appear; for example, we don’t know what we’re missing if we’ve never fallen from a building or if we’ve never had a head on highway collision.
We don’t know what we’re missing if we’ve never had a malignant malady. But these are experiences which most of us are agreed we could very well do without, and so it is in greater or lesser degree, with many things, the effects of which we have seen in the lives of others—even when we don’t know precisely and personally what we are missing.
Sometimes there is said to be a belief that one can’t know what life is really like until the seamy side has been sampled. But to sample the seamy side even experimentally and with no serious thought of failing into false ways is likely to leave its permanent impression upon us and may modify our thoughts and our lives forever after.
And before we do something foolish or useless or questionable, there should be a much better excuse than the old and well-worn argument that we don’t know what we’re missing. After we do know what we are missing, it may be too late. There is a long list of things that it is much better to have missed, as those who haven’t missed them could eloquently and sometimes tragically testify. *
* Revised
“The Spoken Word,” heard over Radio Station K S L and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System, from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, February 4, 1951, 11:00 to 11.30 a.m., Eastern Time. Copyright, 1951
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February 4, 1951
Broadcast Number 1,120