“During my whole life I have not had twenty-four hours of happiness.”
So said Prince Bismarck, one of the greatest statesmen of the nineteenth
century. Eighty-three years of wealth, fame, honors, power, influence,
prosperity and triumph,—years when he held an empire in his
fingers,—but not one day of happiness!
Happiness is the greatest paradox in Nature. It can grow in any soil,
live under any conditions. It defies environment. It comes from within;
it is the revelation of the depths of the inner life as light and heat
proclaim the sun from which they radiate. Happiness consists not of
having, but of being; not of possessing, but of enjoying. It is the warm
glow of a heart at peace with itself. A martyr at the stake may have
happiness that a king on his throne might envy. Man is the creator of
his own happiness; it is the aroma of a life lived in harmony with high
ideals. For what a man _has_, he may be dependent on others; what he
_is_, rests with him alone. What he _ob_tains in life is but
acquisition; what he _at_tains, is growth. Happiness is the soul’s joy
in the possession of the intangible. Absolute, perfect, continuous
happiness in life, is impossible for the human. It would mean the
consummation of attainments, the individual consciousness of a perfectly
fulfilled destiny. Happiness is paradoxic because it may coexist with
trial, sorrow and poverty. It is the gladness of the heart rising
superior to all conditions.
Happiness has a number of under-studies,—gratification, satisfaction,
content and pleasure,—clever imitators that simulate its appearance
rather than emulate its method. Gratification is a harmony between our
desires and our possessions. It is ever incomplete, it is the thankful
acceptance of part. It is a mental pleasure in the quality of what one
receives, an unsatisfiedness as to the quantity. It may be an element in
happiness, but, in itself,—it is not happiness.
Satisfaction is perfect identity of our desires and our possessions. It
exists only so long as this perfect union and unity can be preserved.
But every realized ideal gives birth to new ideals, every step in
advance reveals large domains of the unattained; every feeding
stimulates new appetites—then the desires and possessions are no longer
identical, no longer equal; new cravings call forth new activities, the
equipoise is destroyed, and dissatisfaction reënters. Man might possess
everything tangible in the world and yet not be happy, for happiness is
the satisfying of the soul, not of the mind or the body.
Dissatisfaction, in its highest sense, is the keynote of all advance,
the evidence of new aspirations, the guarantee of the progressive
revelation of new possibilities.
Content is a greatly overrated virtue. It is a kind of diluted despair;
it is the feeling with which we continue to accept substitutes, without
striving for the realities. Content makes the trained individual swallow
vinegar and try to smack his lips as if it were wine. Content enables
one to warm his hands at the fire of a past joy that exists only in
memory. Content is a mental and moral chloroform that deadens the
activities of the individual to rise to higher planes of life and
growth. Man should never be contented with anything less than the best
efforts of his nature can possibly secure for him. Content makes the
world more comfortable for the individual, but it is the death-knell of
progress. Man should be content with each step of progress merely as a
station, discontented with it as a destination; contented with it as a
step; discontented with it as a finality. There are times when a man
should be content with what he _has_, but never with what he _is_.
But content is not happiness; neither is pleasure. Pleasure is
temporary, happiness is continuous; pleasure is a note, happiness is a
symphony; pleasure may exist when conscience utters protests; happiness,
never. Pleasure may have its dregs and its lees; but none can be found
in the cup of happiness.
Man is the only animal that can be really happy. To the rest of the
creation belong only weak imitations of the understudies. Happiness
represents a peaceful attunement of a life with a standard of living. It
can never be made by the individual, by himself, for himself. It is one
of the incidental by-products of an unselfish life. No man can make his
own happiness the one object of his life and attain it, any more than he
can jump on the far end of his shadow. If you would hit the bull’s-eye
of happiness on the target of life, aim above it. Place other things
higher than your own happiness and it will surely come to you. You can
buy pleasure, you can acquire content, you can become satisfied,—but
Nature never put real happiness on the bargain-counter. It is the
undetachable accompaniment of true living. It is calm and peaceful; it
never lives in an atmosphere of worry or of hopeless struggle.
The basis of happiness is the love of something outside self. Search
every instance of happiness in the world, and you will find, when all
the incidental features are eliminated, there is always the constant,
unchangeable element of love,—love of parent for child; love of man and
woman for each other; love of humanity in some form, or a great life
work into which the individual throws all his energies.
Happiness is the voice of optimism, of faith, of simple, steadfast love.
No cynic or pessimist can be really happy. A cynic is a man who is
morally near-sighted,—and brags about it. He sees the evil in his own
heart, and thinks he sees the world. He lets a mote in his eye eclipse
the sun. An incurable cynic is an individual who should long for
death,—for life cannot bring him happiness, death might. The keynote of
Bismarck’s lack of happiness was his profound distrust of human nature.
There is a royal road to happiness; it lies in Consecration,
Concentration, Conquest and Conscience.
Consecration is dedicating the individual life to the service of others,
to some noble mission, to realizing some unselfish ideal. Life is not
something to be lived _through_; it is something to be lived _up_ to. It
is a privilege, not a penal servitude of so many decades on earth.
Consecration places the object of life above the mere acquisition of
money, as a finality. The man who is unselfish, kind, loving, tender,
helpful, ready to lighten the burden of those around him, to hearten the
struggling ones, to forget himself sometimes in remembering others, is
on the right road to happiness. Consecration is ever active, bold and
aggressive, fearing naught but possible disloyalty to high ideals.
Concentration makes the individual life simpler and deeper. It cuts away
the shams and pretences of modern living and limits life to its truest
essentials. Worry, fear, useless regret—all the great wastes that sap
mental, moral or physical energy—must be sacrificed, or the individual
needlessly destroys half the possibilities of living. A great purpose in
life, something that unifies the strands and threads of each day’s
thinking, something that takes the sting from the petty trials, sorrows,
sufferings and blunders of life, is a great aid to Concentration.
Soldiers in battle may forget their wounds, or even be unconscious of
them, in the inspiration of battling for what they believe is right.
Concentration dignifies an humble life; it makes a great life,—sublime.
In morals it is a short-cut to simplicity. It leads to right for right’s
sake, without thought of policy or of reward. It brings calm and rest to
the individual,—a serenity that is but the sunlight of happiness.
Conquest is the overcoming of an evil habit, the rising superior to
opposition and attack, the spiritual exaltation that comes from
resisting the invasion of the grovelling material side of life.
Sometimes when you are worn and weak with the struggle; when it seems
that justice is a dream, that honesty and loyalty and truth count for
nothing, that the devil is the only good paymaster; when hope grows dim
and flickers, then is the time when you must tower in the great sublime
faith that Right must prevail, then must you throttle these imps of
doubt and despair, you must master yourself to master the world around
you. This is Conquest; this is what counts. Even a log can float with
the current; it takes a man to fight sturdily against an opposing tide
that would sweep his craft out of its course. When the jealousies, the
petty intrigues and the meannesses and the misunderstandings in life
assail you, rise above them. Be like a lighthouse that illumines and
beautifies the snarling, swashing waves of the storm that threaten it,
that seek to undermine it and seek to wash over it. This is Conquest.
When the chance to win fame, wealth, success or the attainment of your
heart’s desire, by sacrifice of honor or principle, comes to you and it
does not affect you long enough even to seem a temptation, you have been
the victor. That too is Conquest. And Conquest is part of the royal road
to Happiness.
Conscience, as the mentor, the guide and compass of every act, leads
ever to Happiness. When the individual can stay alone with his
conscience and get its approval, without using force or specious logic,
then he begins to know what real Happiness is. But the individual must
be careful that he is not appealing to a conscience perverted or
deadened by the wrongdoing and consequent deafness of its owner. The man
who is honestly seeking to live his life in Consecration, Concentration
and Conquest, living from day to day as best he can, by the light he
has, may rely implicitly on his Conscience. He can shut his ears to
“what the world says” and find in the approval of his own conscience the
highest earthly tribune—the voice of the Infinite communing with the
Individual.
Unhappiness is the hunger to get; Happiness is the hunger to give. True
happiness must ever have the tinge of sorrow outlived, the sense of pain
softened by the mellowing years, the chastening of loss that in the
wondrous mystery of time transmutes our suffering into love and sympathy
with others.
If the individual should set out for a single day to give Happiness, to
make life happier, brighter and sweeter, not for himself, but for
others, he would find a wondrous revelation of what Happiness really is.
The greatest of the world’s heroes could not by any series of acts of
heroism do as much real good as any individual living his whole life in
seeking, from day to day, to make others happy.
Each day there should be fresh resolution, new strength, and renewed
enthusiasm. “Just for To-day” might be the daily motto of thousands of
societies through the country, composed of members bound together to
make the world better through constant simple acts of kindness, constant
deeds of sweetness and love. And Happiness would come to them, in its
highest and best form, not because they would seek to _absorb_ it,
but—because they seek to _radiate_ it.
_Printed in the United States of America_
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