It is interesting to see how things work themselves out in this world. We used to clean house in the spring. Although spring is violet time, and a season of enormous possibilities in the way of real living, yet this custom for many years worked little hardship, because most people lived reasonably near to nature all the time. Later, however, life became so artificial that we really needed occasional excursions into the country. Then, too, the kindergartens began to teach the children to see and to enjoy nature. Then, just in the nick of time, just as we had encountered the need of and the incentive to trips into the country, the necessity for “spring cleaning” was taken away. We began to have hardwood or painted floors, which made it possible to do housecleaning a little at a time all the year around. Thus there is now no great piece of work left to be done in the spring, when we really ought to be in the woods.
Perhaps the most interesting of the recent movements in the direction of simplifying housework is that in favor of sun-dried underwear, towels, bed linen, etc. This stands for another “working together for good.” When life became complex we began to begrudge the time necessary for ironing, and sometimes, if we thought we could use our time more profitably than in ironing, we used our clothes “rough-dried.” But now we no longer speak of “rough-dried” clothes, because that suggests only their negative advantage in saving work; but we say “sun-dried,” because hygienists have told us that articles that contain in their meshes fresh, sunned air are more healthful than those that contain the impure air of kitchen or laundry. They have told us, also, that because air is a poor conductor of heat, and because clothes that have not been pressed contain more air than those that have, we can get more protection from a given weight of underwear that has been sun-dried than from the same weight of that which has been ironed.
But no one is going to make effort to get time for “the joys of mere living” until he sees a prospect of getting them. For a long time we have recognized the possibility of getting these pleasures in large quantities in the summer time, during our vacations, but we have not recognized half the chances that lie about us all the year. Of all seasons the winter seems most unpromising, and yet I have experienced more joy from simply being alive in the winter than at any other time. On the greater part of the west shore of Lake Michigan there is a bluff. This serves to protect the shore from the west winds which prevail in that part of the world, and it also receives and reflects the morning sun. In cold weather the sand is hard and as easy to walk upon as a cement walk. On winter mornings, even when the thermometer is below zero, one can walk along the shore in perfect comfort in clothing that is light enough to make walking pleasurable. It is possible, also, with perfect comfort, to stop and build a fire, make coffee, and eat a lunch. And the lake and the sky present constant but ever changing beauties, and the sun sparkles on the ice that is heaped up near the shore. It is indeed good to be alive on the west shore of Lake Michigan of a bright winter’s morning, and yet, although I have spent hours walking on the shore on Saturday mornings, I have never seen a person besides those who were with me. Where are the mothers? Why don’t they bring their children down there? Don’t they know the fun of tramping up the shore and building fires and having little camp lunches, and of watching the winter landscape? This is but one instance of joys that are within the reach of all, and yet are undiscovered. Doubtless each one of us knows of some others such as these, and wonders why others do not avail themselves of them. If so, let’s tell each other about them.
But we lose joys in life not only by failing to find them and by complicating the machinery of life, but also by making machinery of those things which are really ends in themselves. There is bathing, for example. We take baths so many times a day or week in order to keep clean and healthy. We might, if we arranged things properly, forget about the necessity for health and cleanliness, and jump into the bath just for the sake of “the cool, silver shock of the plunge.” We perfunctorily “change the air” in our homes so many times each day, but it is possible to get so enamored of living out of doors as to find even the stillness of the air in the house unbearable. When one has reached that point an open window is no longer a means to health, but a part of the joy of living, because it brings the sensation of moving air.
What a difference, too, between a walk and a “constitutional”! I shall never forget a woman whom I saw one summer at a resort in one of the most beautiful parts of the Adirondacks. She used to come forth of a morning after breakfast and, with a set, determined look upon her face, walk so many times around the veranda, and then retire to the parlor for the rest of the day. Poor lady! I suppose she never saw that woodsy path that led up the hill behind the house, nor knew the joys of “leaping from rock up to rock” in order to get to the top of the hill, nor dreamed of the beauties of the moss-covered rock at the top, with the red-berried bush hanging over it. She never knew the pleasures of getting lost in the cranberry bog and having to wade the stream to get out. Poor, poor lady!
As for the joys of social intercourse with those we love, we lose them partly by letting them get mixed up with the machinery of education. Study clubs are all very well in their way and in their place, but there is such a thing as having too many of them. It is possible to get more profit as well as more pleasure from reading a masterpiece of literature for half an hour, and then talking with a friend for an hour and a half, than from listening to a rehash of the masterpiece for an hour and then talking with a lot of people we only half like for another hour. It is possible, also, to lose the pleasures of the expression of friendship by sacrificing them to formalities. If we give dinners and receptions simply for the sake of discharging social obligations, we are bound to throw away time which for the sake of the joy of living ought to be given to those we love.
But it is possible, also, to lose the pleasures of friendship by allowing them to interfere with the machinery of daily life, and to come to a time when we have to sacrifice either social intercourse or business. Perhaps there is no means of entertaining which yields so much satisfaction with so little interference with that regularity in the daily program that is necessary for health and work as the afternoon tea. By this I mean, not the large reception which sometimes goes by the name of “tea,” but the little, informal tea drinking. The food that is served at such a time is not a means of life, but simply an addition to the dietary made for the sake of refreshment and pleasure. It is not, therefore, necessary to serve enough to sustain life from one meal to another. Moreover, it is possible to buy ready prepared all the materials—the biscuits, the wafers, and the candies—and to have them always on hand. If busy people have it understood that they drink tea at a certain hour when at home, and that their friends are always welcome to drink with them, they are likely to get visits with real friends which they could never get in any other way.
But there is another occupation which may be an end in life without at the same time being a means. That is meditation on life and its meaning. To stand off from life and to view its follies, its foibles, and its inconsistencies, its pathos, its humor, to see all sides of it—this is one of the joys of mere living. Perhaps the best time for this is during a walk in town, and it is the chance to see life that can change a constitutional upon city pavements from a means to life to a part of life itself. He who is too busy with the machinery of life to get a chance to look upon life itself, as upon a drama, loses half the joy of living.
To stretch the muscles, to breathe deeply, to feel the blood circulate rapidly, to feel the wind blowing in one’s face, to love and to express love, to stand off and see life from afar—these are joys for which it is worth while to simplify the machinery of life.