About the pursuit of happiness, how often I say to myself, that
considering life as a whole, the most one ought to expect is a kind of
negative happiness, a neutral state, the absence of acute or positive
unhappiness. Neutral tints make up the great background of nature, and
why not of life? Neutral tints wear best in anything. We do not tire
of them. How much even in the best books is of a negative or neutral
character,--a background upon which the positive beauty is projected.
A kind of tranquil, wholesome indifference, with now and then a dash
of positive joy, is the best of the common lot. To be consciously and
positively happy all the while,--how vain to expect it! We cannot walk
through life on mountain peaks. Both laughter and tears we know, but a
safe remove from both is the average felicity.
Another thought which often occurs to me is that we each have a certain
capacity for happiness or unhappiness which is pretty constant. We
are like lakes or ponds which have their level, and which as a rule
are not permanently raised or lowered. As things go in this world,
each of us has about all the happiness he has the capacity for. We
cannot be permanently set up or cast down. A healthful nature, in the
vicissitudes of experience, is not made permanently unhappy, nor, on
the other hand, is its water level permanently raised. Deplete us
and we fill up; flood us and we quickly run down. We think that if a
certain event were to come to pass, if some rare good fortune should
befall us, our stock of happiness would be permanently increased, but
the chances are that it would not; after a time we should settle back
to the old everyday level. We should get used to the new conditions,
the new prosperity, and find life wearing essentially the same tints as
before. Our pond is fed from hidden springs; happiness is from within,
and outward circumstances have but little power over it. The poor man
thinks how happy he would be with the possessions of his rich neighbor,
but it is one of the commonplace sayings of the preacher that he would
not be. Wealth would not change his nature. His wants, his longings,
would still run on as before. It would be high water with him for a
season, but it could not last.
I have been told that, as a rule, the millionaires are the unhappiest
of men. Restless, suspicious, sated, ennuied, they are like a sick man
who can find no position in which he can rest. Our real and necessary
wants are so few and so easily met,--food, clothes, shelter! If a
little money will bring us such comfort, what will not riches do? So
we multiply our possessions many fold, hoping thereby to multiply
our happiness. But it does not work, or works inversely. Do you
suppose the millionaire’s little girl has any more pleasure with her
hundred-dollar doll than your washerwoman’s child has with her rag
baby? And what would not the millionaire himself give if he could eat
his rich dinner with the relish the day laborer has in eating his!
The great depressor and destroyer of happiness is death; but from this
blow, too, a healthful nature recovers. The broken and crushed plant
rises again. The scar remains, but in the tissue beneath runs the same
old blood.
It is undoubtedly true, however, that as time wears on, life becomes
of a soberer hue. We are young but once, and need not wish to be young
more than once. There is the happiness of youth, there is the happiness
of manhood, there is the happiness of old age,--each period wearing a
hue peculiar to itself. One of the illusions of life, however, which it
is hard to shake off, is the fancying we were happier in the past than
we are in the present. The past has such power to hallow and heighten
effects! In the distance the course we have traveled looks smooth and
inviting. The present moment is always the lowest point in the circle;
it is that part of the wheel which touches the ground. Those days in
the past that so haunt our memory and that seem invested with a charm
and a significance that is unknown to the present,--how shall we teach
ourselves that it is all a trick of the imagination, the result of the
medium through which they are seen, and that they, too, were once the
present, and were as prosy and commonplace as the moment that now is?
It is equally a mistake to suppose we shall be happier to-morrow or
next day than we are to-day. When the future comes it will then be the
present, no longer a matter of imagination, but of actual experience.
This prosy, care-burdened self will be there, and the rainbow tints
will still be in the distance.
The man who is hampered and constrained by the circumstances of his
life, thinks his happiness would be greatly augmented by greater
freedom, if he could go here or there, do this or that. But the
chances are that such would not be the case. For instance, when I see
a man going up and down the country looking for a place to settle, to
build himself a home, and when I think of my own experience in that
direction, I say, happy is the man whom circumstances take by the
collar and set down without any choice on his part, in a particular
place, and say to him, “There, abide there, and earn thy bread there.”
He is a free man then, paradoxical as it may seem,--free to make the
most of his opportunities without regret. He is not the victim of
his own whims or follies. He is not forever tormenting himself with
the notion that he has made a mistake, that if he had gone here or
there, he would have been happier. Now he accepts the inevitable and
makes the most of it. He goes to work with the more heart because he
has no choice. He wastes no time in regrets, he makes no comparisons
that disturb him, but devotes all his strength to getting all the
satisfaction out of life that is possible.
If one were to make a choice of going on foot while other people had
the privilege of wings, he would be haunted by the fear that he had
made a mistake, and as he trudged along in the mire, doubtless would
envy the people in the air above him; but if he had no choice in the
matter and was compelled to go afoot through no fault of his, he would
thank his stars that his fate was no worse. When choice comes in and
we can elect this or that, then the door for regret, for unhappiness,
is opened. We do not mourn because we were born in this place and not
that, but if we had been consulted we might fancy some cause of regret.
Yet there is a condition or circumstance that has a greater bearing
upon the happiness of life than any other. What is it? I have hardly
hinted at it in the foregoing remarks. It is one of the simplest things
in the world and within reach of all. If this secret were something I
could put up at auction, what a throng of bidders I should have, and
what high ones! People would come from all parts of the earth to bid
upon it. Only the wise ones can guess what it is. Some might say it is
health, or money, or friends, or this or that possession, but you may
have all these things and not be happy. You may have fame and power,
and not be happy. I maintain there is one thing more necessary to a
happy life than any other, though health and money and friends and
home are all important. That one thing is--what? The sick man will say
health; the poor man, wealth; the ambitious man, power; the scholar,
knowledge; the overworked man, rest.
Without the one thing I have in mind, none of these things would long
help their possessors to be happy. We could not long be happy without
food or drink or clothes or shelter, but we may have all these things
to perfection and still want the prime condition of happiness. It is
often said that a contented mind is the first condition of happiness,
but what is the first condition of a contented mind? You will be
disappointed when I tell you what this all-important thing is,--it is
so common, so near at hand, and so many people have so much of it and
yet are not happy. They have too much of it, or else the kind that is
not best suited to them. What is the best thing for a stream? It is to
keep moving. If it stops, it stagnates. So the best thing for a man is
that which keeps the currents going,--the physical, the moral, and the
intellectual currents. Hence the secret of happiness is--something to
do; some congenial work. Take away the occupation of all men, and what
a wretched world it would be! Half of it would commit suicide in less
than ten days.
Few persons realize how much of their happiness, such as it is, is
dependent upon their work, upon the fact that they are kept busy and
not left to feed upon themselves. Happiness comes most to persons who
seek her least, and think least about her. It is not an object to be
sought; it is a state to be induced. It must follow and not lead. It
must overtake you, and not you overtake it. How important is health to
happiness, yet the best promoter of health is something to do.
Blessed is the man who has some congenial work, some occupation in
which he can put his heart, and which affords a complete outlet to all
the forces there are in him.
A man does not want much time to think about himself. Too much thought
of the past and its shadows overwhelms; too much thought of the present
dissipates; too much thought of the future unsettles. I find that if a
horse stands too much in the stable, with too little work, he gets the
crib-bite. Too little work makes a kind of windsucker of a man.
I recently had a letter from a friend who, from having rented his farm
for a number of years, had had too much leisure. In this letter he
writes how well and happy he has been during the season; he has enjoyed
existence,--the gods have smiled upon him and he has found life worth
living. Then he told me, not by way of explanation, but as a matter
of news, that his head man had been disabled two months before, and
the care of the farm had devolved upon himself; more than that, he
was renovating a place he had recently bought, remodeling the house,
shaping the grounds, etc. Then I knew why he had been so unusually
well and happy. He had had something to do into which he could throw
himself, and it had set all the currents of his being going again.
About the same time I had a letter from another farmer friend who told
me how busy he was,--so many things pressing that there was need of
his going in two or more directions at once, not to get rich, but to
make both ends meet. And yet he was so happy! (Therefore he was so
happy, say I.) Troubles and trials, he says, are few and soon over
with, while the pleasures are past all enumeration. “There is so much
to be enjoyed, one never gets to the end of it.”
This man was too busy to be unhappy; he had no time for ennui or the
blues. You see he did not overindulge in the luxury of leisure. He was
compelled to take it sparingly, hence it always tasted good to him.
The fruit of the tree of life of which we must eat very sparingly is
leisure. Too much of it, and it turns to gall on our tongue. A little
too much of those things which we think will make us happy, and we are
cloyed, and miserable indeed. The boy would like to dine entirely upon
pie or sweetmeats, and we all need the lesson that the dessert of life
is to be taken sparingly. Because money is good, do not, therefore,
think that riches are an unmixed blessing; because leisure is sweet to
you, do not, therefore, imagine you would be happy with nothing to do.
My correspondent was too busy and too poor to be cloyed or sated, too
much the victim of circumstances to be self-accusing and repining. He
had no choice but to go on and make the most of things.
I overheard an old man and a young man talking at the station. The
young man was telling of an old uncle of his who had sold his farm and
retired to the village. He had enjoyed going to the village, so now
he thought he would take his fill of it. But it soon cloyed upon him.
He had nothing to do. Every night he would say with a sigh of relief,
“Well, another day is through,” and each morning wondered how he could
endure the day.
In every village up and down the older parts of the country there are
several such men; every day is a burden to them because they have
nothing to do. They drift aimlessly up and down the street; they
loiter in the post-office or lounge in the grocery store or hotel
bar-room,--no comfort to themselves and no use to the world. With what
longing they must look upon the farmers that drive in to get a horse
shod or to do a little trading and then drive briskly away! How the
vision of the farm, the cattle, the sheep, the barn, the growing crops,
the early morning, the sowing, the planting, the harvesting must haunt
them! Nothing to do! When they were driven and oppressed with work they
had thought, What pleasure to be free from all this, to be at liberty
to go and come as one likes, with no cows to milk or chores to do! Now
they probably have not a hen or a dog to comfort them. These men do not
live out more than half their latter days. Nature has no use for them,
and they soon drop away; whereas their neighbors who stick to the farm
and keep the currents going, reach a much more advanced period of life.
Rust and rot and mildew come to unused things. An empty and deserted
house, how quickly it goes to decay! and an unoccupied man, how is his
guard down on every side! When the will relaxes or is not stimulated,
the physical powers relax also and their power to ward off disease is
greatly lessened. Among men of all kinds who have retired from active
life the mortality should be and doubtless is much greater than among
men of the same age who stick to their lifelong occupations. Here is
a farmer just died at eighty-eight who managed his farm till within a
few months of his death; here is his neighbor, ten years younger, who
retired to the village several years ago, now wandering about more than
half demented.
Oh, the blessedness of work, of life-giving and life-sustaining work!
The busy man is the happy man; the idle man is the unhappy. When you
feel blue and empty and disconsolate, and life seems hardly worth
living, go to work with your hands,--delve, hoe, chop, saw, churn,
thrash, anything to quicken the pulse and dispel the fumes. The blue
devils can be hoed under in less than half an hour; ennui cannot stand
the bucksaw fifteen minutes; the whole outlook may be brightened in a
brief time by turning your hands to something you can do with a will.
I speak from experience. A few years ago I found my life beginning to
stagnate; I discovered that I was losing my interest in things. I was
out of sorts both physically and mentally; sleep was poor, digestion
was poor, and my days began to wear too sombre a tinge. There was no
good reason for it that I could perceive except that I was not well and
fully occupied. I had too much leisure.
What was to be done? Go to work. Get more land and become a farmer in
earnest. Exchange the penholder for the crowbar and the hoe-handle. I
already had a few acres of land and had been a fruitgrower in a small
way; why should I not double my possessions and plant a vineyard that
promised some returns? So I began to cast covetous eyes upon some land
adjoining me that was for sale. I nibbled at it very shyly at first.
I walked over it time after time and began to note its good points.
Then I began to pace it off. I found pleasure and occupation even in
this. Then I took a line and began to measure it. I measured off a
pretty good slice and fancied it already my own. This tasted so good
to me that I measured off a larger slice and then a still larger, till
I found that nothing short of the whole field would satisfy me; I must
go to the fence and take a clean strip one field broad from the road to
the river.
This I did, thus doubling the nine acres I already possessed. It was
winter; I could hardly wait till spring to commence operations upon the
new purchase. Already I felt the tonic effect of those nine acres. They
were a stimulus, an invitation, and a challenge. To subdue them and
lick them into shape and plant them with choice grapes and currants and
raspberries,--the mere thought of it toned me up and improved my sleep.
Before the snow was all off the ground in March we set to work
under-draining the moist and springy places. My health and spirits
improved daily. I seemed to be underdraining my own life and carrying
off the stagnant water, as well as that of the land. Then a lot of ash
stumps and brush, an old apple orchard, and a great many rocks and
large stones were to be removed before the plough could be set going.
With what delight I saw this work go forward, and I bore my own part in
it! I had not seen such electric April days for years; I had not sat
down to dinner with such relish and satisfaction for the past decade;
I had not seen the morning break with such anticipations since I was a
boy. The clear, bright April days, the great river dimpling and shining
there, the arriving birds, the robins laughing, the high-holes calling,
the fox sparrows whistling, the blackbirds gurgling, and the hillside
slope where we were at work,--what delight I had in it all, and what
renewal of life it brought me! I found the best way to see the spring
come was to be in the field at work. You are then in your proper place,
and the genial influences steal in upon you and envelop you unawares.
You glance up from your work, and the landscape is suddenly brimming
with beauty. There is more joy and meaning in the voices of the birds
than you ever before noticed. You do not have time to exhaust the
prospect or to become sated with nature, but feel her constantly as a
stimulating presence. Out of the corners of your eyes and by a kind of
indirection you see the subtle and renewing spirits of the season at
work.
Before April was finished, the plough had done its perfect work, and
in early May the vines and plants were set. Then followed the care and
cultivation of them during the summer, and the pruning and training
of them the subsequent season, all of which has been a delight to me.
Indeed the new vineyard has become almost a part of myself. I walk
through it with the most intimate and personal regard for every vine.
I know how they came there. I owe them a debt of gratitude. They have
done more for me than a trip to Europe or to California could have
done. If it brings me no other returns, the new lot already has proved
one of the best investments I ever made in my life.
Oh, the blessedness of motion, of a spur to action, of a current
in one’s days, of something to stimulate the will, to help reach a
decision, to carry down stream the waste and débris of one’s life!
Hardly a life anywhere so befouled or stagnant, but it would clear and
renew itself, if the currents were set going by the proper kind and
amount of honest work!