Happiness is a gift of temperament. The occupation that makes one man happy the day long would be capital punishment to another man. I have known people to possess everything and enjoy nothing; others, who possess little, dwell in paradise. It is a braver thing to extract honey from the hive of life than to leave it rotting in the comb. Alas! these weak-kneed, nervous mortals who are afraid of being too happy: they tremble as they sit at the banquet. They toy with a lean and hungry fate and dare not clasp a full-bosomed blessing. They prefer misery as a diet, with a spice of religion thrown in to flavour it. They fancy self-inflicted misery is a virtue to be cultivated, and a grace to be counted for righteousness. We shrewdly detect in such conduct a pose. It lacks the grace of sincerity. Such people, overfed on misery, fatten on it incontinently. It is the diet of a low, melancholy temperament.
There is no standard-pattern happiness planned to suit the temperament of everybody like the map of a city which all travellers follow to find their bearings. Happiness is a city that each person maps out for himself; its highways and byways are of his own engineering and grow to match his own requirements. Happiness is not a sloppy garment like a ready-made coat that you buy in a store. Happiness must be made to fit. In fact, every man makes his own happiness.
We all distil pleasure out of life in our peculiar way. Only our ways differ as the poles asunder. One man cannot understand where the other man's relish for life comes in. What is nauseous as bitter herbs in one mouth tastes delicate as the wines of Orvieto on another palate. A famous American millionaire found greater satisfaction in the simple pleasure of attending funerals than in all the superb luxuries which his millions brought him. We do not envy his simple pleasure. It was an innocent method of enjoyment peculiarly his own.
I knew a man who made an income of over £10,000 a year by hard work, and his pleasure was immense in doing it. One half of his relaxation in life was making more income, and the other half his amusement consisted in lecturing people on the evil of extravagance if they spent "tuppence" on a bus fare instead of walking three-pennyworth of leather off the soles of their boots. He never spent "tuppence" himself if he could save it. He drove life at high pressure, and enjoyed the sensations of a quick run. People called him a money-making machine devoid of fine feeling. People made a mistake. His nature was highly strung. He was keenly sensitive to pleasure--the pleasure of money-making. It was the poetry, the luxury, the fine art of life all rolled into one, and it quickened the gay emotions within him that seeing a good play, hearing an eloquent sermon or driving a spanking four-in-hand to Ascot on a fine June morning, excites in other people. There are various buttons to press, but they all send the same thrill of earthly pleasure tingling through the human frame. Different hands strike the same chords on the harp of life, and they tremble into song.
Some heroically minded people assert there are only two things in life: duty and happiness. It is not everybody who wants to do his duty--that is a special gift of Providence few enjoy. But everyone wants to be happy, and happiness is the greatest thing of all: other people's happiness as well as our own. We are not all sagacious to discern the angel of duty when she comes mixed in a promiscuous assembly of spirits less honourable than she. They all dress becomingly and smile bewitchingly that you cannot mark her down; her radiance shines no brighter than other luminous spirits that accompany her. We should try the spirits whether they be good or evil ones. However, they move first, and try us with their beauty, their flattery, and their gilded promises. According to the gospel of St. Robert Louis Stevenson, there is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.
A third thing some people suggest makes life worth living is experience. Experience, they maintain, is a more valuable treasure than happiness; experience is a pearl of great price, and we must sell all we have to possess it. The world is spacious; range it widely, breathe its bracing airs, sail its deep seas in search of experience. Pursue it, and if in the pursuit you are blown about by the fickle winds of fate, the buffeting may be disagreeable, but it is most exhilarating and healthy to the earnest seeker after experience. Provided you are blown, and blown violently, the direction of the gale matters not; the north-easter and the zephyr both teach. Experience builds up character and increases knowledge, though during building operations your wisdom may remain a stationary virtue. If you come out of the conflict with only experience to your credit at the other end of the struggle be thankful. Life is very good. Its chief spoils may be anguish and sorrow, yet experience makes it full and rich.
The logic of this cold philosophy needs consideration before adopting it as gospel. If a dinted shield and a broken sword are the only spoils you bring home from the wars and hang up in the family parlour as trophies of victory, it is not an adequate recompense for the rich and vital experience gained in the fight. Experience was what Don Quixote in the slippered comfort of his home hungered after. It was what he found on his travels, and after passing through much tribulation it was the one prize he brought home with him at the journey's end. Experience many an ambitious man has found to be as an empty goblet to his thirsty lips.
When the Creator was busy in the minting-house He did not cast his creatures all in the same mould, or coin them of the same metal. Some people are of fine temperament, cram full of emotion; they are all feeling, and express their feeling vigorously. Other people are of baser metal. They are stolid, and pass through life neither contented nor discontented with their lot; they are neither happy nor miserable. They are well-regulated clocks running slowly down to the last tick, and then ceasing to tick at all. Monotony is the bane of their existence, blighting it with double dulness. They feel little and say nothing about it. One never knows what hidden compensations life provides for its multitudinous offspring. These torpid people must have a secret well of satisfaction from which they dip refreshing draughts in thirsty moments.
The child of emotion is more vivacious; he has colour, romance, movement. He is of a rarer vintage; there is sparkle in the wine of life. Occasionally the wine turns sour and drops flavour. Disagreeable people do exist for some veiled purpose of Providence, as the species never becomes extinct in the land. In infancy they were rocked in the cradle of discontent, and they have seldom slept out of it since. They have grown up in a nursery of their own. They are highly strung, and have a genius for living in the moment--irritably. Their wit is brilliant, it scintillates like running water in the sunshine, but it cuts like a razor. Everybody within reach of their tongue, even innocent people, feel the whip of their capricious temper. I suppose some grim pleasure feeds their fiery nature when they subdue friend and enemy under them. It is an unenviable pleasure which they enjoy; nobody shares with them, and when their ill-humour dies down it must leave a nasty taste in their mouth.
If you want to be happy, do not expect too much from life. Do not ask more from friendship than you give, for eventually the balance is sure to adjust itself. Do not ask more than your share of good things; if you do exceed the limit, disappointment will dog your footsteps all the day. You cannot expect to be always happy. Trouble and sorrow come to all of us, with a difference. Some people extract comfort out of trouble, and it assuages their grief; others add worry to their woe, and it aggravates their vexation of spirit.