“I do ask Renunciation of My children—Renunciation of the less.”
It is not every avenue to Happiness that is unpleasant at the start. But it is quite likely that certain treatments—especially abstinence from or moderation in various stimulants and narcotics—may be, for a time, far from producing any Happiness.
When You are Happy, be Really Happy
It is well known (see “Alison’s History of Europe”) that those who have lived for many years in hot climates are so saturated with warmth that they keep warm for some time after they have come into a cooler climate like ours. Somewhat similarly, whenever we are happy, if we let our whole self—every cell and atom within our body from tip to toe—become saturated with Happiness whenever we feel happy, we should be able to carry on the habit when the conditions seem less satisfactory; we should still feel the glow. But we simply must be and feel happy “with all our mind and with all our soul and with all our strength,” at the happy times. Without feverish excitement, we should thrill throughout with Happiness, and be happy “all over,” as someone was said to smile all over! It is a good phrase.
For why not let all the cells and fibres enjoy themselves with us? Why keep the Happiness—as if we were autocratic and despotic Monarchs, instead of Representatives of a Democratic Community—to ourselves? Why not let the cells all “rejoice with us that rejoice”?
They will repay us a hundredfold in times of trouble and trial. They will then thrust back Happiness to us, as the roots of a plant thrust up stems and leaves and flowers in return for the warmth and light and air and moisture and chemicals that they have absorbed.
If—as Virchow and many others hold—cells have some individuality and some intelligence, will they not respond to our Happiness, at least as much as you and I respond to the Happiness of our Nation and Empire when there is good news and success of the whole of which we form a particle?
To enjoy an Environment, or the memory of it, is a pleasant Avenue. If, instead of rushing through our sweet holidays and hours of peace and pleasantness, we “pause on every charm,” and concentrate our attention on the Pleasantness, we can make the Environment, on which so many people depend for their Health and Happiness, our own possession, within our minds, by means of picture-memories, or sound-memories, or even word-memories. Here is one, from J. Beattie:—
“But who the melodies of morn can tell?
The wild brook babbling down the mountain-side;