“It is worth while to collect cartoons and cuttings from the ‘Daily Mirror,’ ‘Punch,’ and other papers, and to look through them when the dumps try to dominate.”
Laughing and smiling can come under muscular control, no less than walking and sitting—no less than frowning and grumbling. We can tense or relax muscles. We can equally easily laugh or smile. And the mere muscular action will help the mind and the feelings to be free from non-happiness.
There are, of course, wrong kinds of laughter and smiling. I read a book devoted almost entirely to the abuse of laughter and smiling. But the right kinds are as valuable as they are rare.
Several people that I know have the supreme art of making troubles almost blessings by catching at once the ludicrous aspect—going round to the other side and seeing things from a different approach. And sometimes, entering into the trouble by the Gate of Humour, they find that the trouble is not a torture-chamber but a factory of Success and Happiness.
The right laugh and smile is an expression of real Faith; and, as we have seen, the expression, if persevered in, tends to bring the reality.
The Power of Imagination
And keep happy by Imagination. How exhilarating it is to imagine oneself succeeding in one’s favourite game, or in one’s business or art or hobby. Such imagination is far better than the memory of defeats, except in so far as the latter helps us to correct our faults.
The Power of Expression
Then there is the Art of Expression, advocated by Delsarte and William James. The latter, in his “Talks on Psychology,” may not be strictly accurate and scientific, but at any rate he is practically useful, when he says:
“If we only check a cowardly impulse in time—for example, or if we only don’t strike the blow or rip out with the complaining or insulting word that we shall regret as long as we live—our feelings themselves will presently be the calmer and better, with no particular guidance from us on their own account. Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.