The lover is happy because he has discovered his prize and is enthralled by a pursuit that makes all other things seem mean and paltry. Men are happy in proportion as they yield themselves to the best, as they tune their hearts to strike the highest key of their lives. Paul is happier in the dungeon, where he can be true to his ideal, than Nero on the throne without one.
There is feast in days of famine for those who have the inner eyes for the riches of life. You always can find in this world what your heart is looking for. But you cannot satisfy your heart on everything you may chance to find, and until the heart is satisfied and the deeper needs of the life are met there is no happiness.
The search for happiness is not altogether selfish. Few things can we do that will help others more than the cultivation of serene strength and cheer in ourselves. Not the soulless, set smile, but the strength and sympathy that flow from a life fixed in confidence in eternal right and good and unfailing love.
THE FOLLY OF ANXIETY
The great Teacher does not say that we are not to be thoughtful, or provident; but He insists that no event can be provided for by anxiety, by fretting over it before it comes. Half the people on our streets look as though life was a sorry business. It is hard to find a happy looking man or woman. Worry is the cause of their woebegone appearance. Worry makes the wrinkles; worry cuts the deep, down-glancing lines on the face; worry is the worst disease of our modern times.
Care is contagious; it is hard work being cheerful at a funeral, and it is a good deal harder to keep the frown from your face when you are in the throng of the worry worn ones. Yet, we have no right to be dispensers of gloom; no matter how heavy our loads may seem to be we have no right to throw their burden on others nor even to cast the shadow of them on other hearts.
Anxiety is instability. Fret steals away force. He who dreads to-morrow trembles to-day. Worry is weakness. The successful men may be always wide-awake, but they never worry. Fret and fear are like fine sand, thrown into life's delicate mechanism; they cause more than half the friction; they steal half the power.
Cheer is strength. Nothing is so well done as that which is done heartily, and nothing is so heartily done as that which is done happily. Be happy, is an injunction not impossible of fulfillment. Pleasure may be an accident; but happiness comes in definite ways. It is the casting out of our foolish fears that we may have room for a few of our common joys. It is the telling our worries to wait until we get through appreciating our blessings. Take a deep breath, raise your chest, lift your eyes from the ground, look up and think how many things you have for which to be grateful, and you will find a smile growing where one may long have been unknown.
Take the right kind of thought—for to take no thought would be sin—but take the calm, unanxious thought of your business, your duties, your difficulties, your disappointments and all the things that once have caused you fear, and you will find yourself laughing at most of them. In some you will see but friends in disguise, and in others puny foes decked out as giants. But begin to dread them, brood over them, look at them with eyes prejudiced with fear, and the least difficulties rise like mountains. In winter some people worry themselves into malaria over the mosquitoes they may meet next summer.
Mistaken ideas of religion are responsible for a great many of the unnecessary wrinkles on the human face. Too many have thought it would be impossible to be happy in two worlds, and so, having elected happiness in the one which they thought would last longest, they have no choice but to be unhappy in this one. In fact, some seem to suppose that the greater their misery here the more intense will their bliss be there. If heaven is to be bought that way certainly many are paying full price for it.