Pushing to the Front

by Orison Swett Marden

There have never been such conflicting estimates, such varying ideas, regarding any state of human condition as to what constitutes happiness. Many people think that it is purchasable with money, but many of the most restless, discontented, unhappy people in the world are rich. They have the means of purchasing what they thought would produce happiness, but the real thing eludes them. On the other hand, some of the poorest people in the world are happy. The fact is that there is no possible way of cornering or purchasing happiness for it is absolutely beyond the reach of money. It is true, we can purchase a few comforts and immunities from some annoyances and worries with money which we can not get without it. On the other hand, the great majority of people who have inherited money are positively injured by it, because it often stops their own development by taking away the motive for self-effort and self-reliance.

When people get money they often stop growing because they depend upon the money instead of relying upon their own inherent resources.

Rich people suffer from their indulgences more than poor ones suffer from their hardships.

A great many rich people die with liver and kidney troubles which are effected both by eating and drinking. The kidneys are very susceptible to the presence of alcohol. If rich people try to get greater enjoyment out of life than poor people by eating and drinking, they are likely very quickly to come to grief. If they try to seek it through the avenue of leisure they soon find that an idle brain is one of the most dangerous things in the world—nothing deteriorates faster. The mind was made for continual strong action, systematic, vigorous exercise, and this is possible only when some dominating aim and a great life purpose leads the way.

No person can be really healthful whose mind is not usefully and continually employed. So there is no possibility of finding real happiness in idleness if we are able to work. Nature brings a wonderful compensatory power to those who are crippled or sick or otherwise disabled from working, but there is no compensation for idleness in those who are able to work. Nature only gives us the use of faculties we employ. "Use or lose" is her motto, and when we cease to use a faculty or function it is gradually taken away from us, gradually shrivels and atrophies.

There is no satisfaction like that which comes from the steady, persistent, honest, conscientious pursuit of a noble aim. There are a multitude of evidences in man's very structure that his marvelous mechanism was intended for action, for constant exercise, and that idleness and stagnation always mean deterioration and death of power. No man can remain idle without shrinking, shrivelling, constantly becoming a less efficient man; for he can keep up only those faculties and powers which he constantly employs, and there is no other possible way. Nature puts her ban of deterioration and loss of power upon idleness. We see these victims everywhere shorn of power—weak, nerveless, backboneless, staminaless, gritless people, without forcefulness, mere nonentities because they have ceased working. Without work mental health is impossible and without health the fullest happiness is impossible.

It has been said that happiness is the most delusive thing that man pursues. Yet why need it be a blind search?

If we were to stop the first hundred people we meet on the street and ask them what in their experience has given them the most happiness, probably the answer of no two would be alike.

How interesting and instructive it would be to give a thousand dollars to each of these hundred people, and without their knowing it, follow them and see what they would do with the money,—what it would mean to them.

To some poor youth hungry for an education, with no opportunity to gain it, this money would mean a college education. Another would see in his money a more comfortable home for his aged parents. To another this money would suggest all sorts of dissipation. Some would see books and leisure for self-improvement, a trip abroad.