VIII
ON THE ESSENTIALS OF HAPPINESS
“That’s a pleasant cemetery, isn’t it?” asked somebody of an old lady on a railroad train one day.
“I don’t know,” was the answer, “I am not looking for cemeteries. I am looking for flower-gardens; I find lots of beautiful ones, too.”
There was a whole sermon in the old lady’s remark. How often we go through life watching out for cemeteries, forgetting that flower-gardens are much more numerous as well as far saner, pleasanter and healthier. We get into such a habit of noticing the uncomfortable conditions of life and ignoring the other kind that are always so much more plenty, that we forget our mercies. A teacher once told me of a school-boy who was so optimistic in his attitude toward life that he never saw the unpleasant side of things. If he is given ten problems, and after laboring patiently all the morning over them, seven are incorrect, he smiles triumphantly and says, “Well, I got three of ’em right, anyhow.” Would that there were more of him!
It all depends on our view of life. Happiness is a condition of the mind; we are happy if we train ourselves to think so; not to expect too much of life or of other people, and to keep the sun shining in our heaven. On the contrary, if we allow ourselves to worry and fret, to miss the joy of little things, to lose sight of all the greatness and nobleness that come into every-day life (if only we train our eyes to see), we can easily lose the best happiness in the world, that of realizing the beauty of humility, unselfishness, good temper, right living, high standards and purity of heart that lies all around us. There are plenty of mental and moral flower-gardens on every side, if only we are not blind, if only we do not look for cemeteries.
Now, let us make up our minds whether we care to be happy all the time or not. “Why, of course we do; how foolish such a question!” Then let us see how small a matter happiness is, and then decide whether it is worth having. If your definition of happiness is an ecstasy, a delirium of joy, a flood of emotion that shall engulf you in an occasional paroxysm, you might as well give up asking for a steady diet of happiness. But after we arrive at years of discretion we generally know that waves of delirium do not constitute pure happiness. It is not until we cease looking for impossible sustained attitudes of mind that we come to realize what happiness is. Not until we have lived long enough to accept the possibilities and let go of the impractical.
The clouds are a blessed place for our heads, but the earth is the only legitimate place in this incarnation for our feet. Antæus, you remember, who had such victory in wrestling with Hercules, was the son of earth, and it was not until Hercules succeeded in getting him off the earth and into the air that he was able to throttle him. It is very important that woman should pay a good deal of attention to her circulation to prevent her feet going to sleep or her head getting giddy.
We talk altogether too much. Hundreds of women (to estimate it modestly) chatter from the moment they open their eyes in the morning until they close them after everybody else is tired out for the night. They cannot bear to be alone for a moment, facing the emptiness of their own hearts and brains, and so they talk, talk, talk the precious hours away, without ever saying anything. Oh, what would I give for the hours these women waste in talk that amounts to nothing but fruitless sound?
Again, we read too much. Every new volume of history, essay, science (in easy doses), bibliography, and especially of fiction, filters through our minds like water through a sieve. We take in an enormous amount of fuel, but it all goes up the intellectual chimney in smoke. Reading does no good unless it teaches us to think and gives us something new to think about. If we read so much that our intellectual powers become inoperative, to what end is it? We need to think more; and to think to any purpose we must learn to face ourselves alone. And it is only by seeking and finding our true selves that we can come into a full comprehension of what a full, wide every-day sort of thing true happiness is, and how easily it may be obtained, after all. We may have flower-gardens in our own souls, an’ we will.
Said the Rev. Dr. Burns: “To simply perpetuate low aims, frivolous characters, mammon-worshipping beings, is to curse rather than to bless. This is not the end nor kingdom to which woman has been called. A message has gone forth—not to a favored one, but to every woman, whatever may be her position. Some are faithfully and heroically striving to obey the command; others are indifferent. They are asleep. But sleep must give place to work, indifference to interest, selfish ease to self-sacrifice. Littleness, worldliness, must all give way to the execution of the command.