Be sure you are more doleful than you need be. There is no liar like low spirits. Melancholy is a sort of mental stagnation; and stagnant pools are soon filled with foul growths.
You there, you on the verge of despair, sit down, take a pen, and write me off a list of your sorrows and misfortunes; and follow it with a faithful inventory of what you have left on the side of possible happiness, your faculties, your possessions, your friends and relatives, your acquirements, your tastes, your healthful activities, your probability of life, your reasonable expectations, not forgetting your duties to others and the gratification their fulfillment will give. Then I am ready to adjust the account.
Plato says that nothing in human life is worth much trouble; certainly many things give us more trouble than they are worth.
How small is your grief if you measure it by the standards of the universe! Look up at the calm and silent stars; they are billions of miles away. Notice that piece of sandstone; fifty million years have passed since the primeval tide washed its grains together. Is there not something in such thoughts that makes you a little ashamed of the preoccupation of your mind with its petty present cares?
Do you reflect sometimes that you are but one of fifteen hundred millions of human beings, fifty millions of whom die every year? Is it worth while passing your invisibly small share of life in worrying about trifles?