The Crown of Individuality, VII. Throwing Away Our Happiness

The Crown of Individuality. BY WILLIAM GEORGE JORDAN. VII. — Throwing Away Our Happiness. If in the desert, a lone traveler, in angry protest against the hardships of his journey, were to slash with his knife his goatskin water-bag, letting the hot sand drink up the water that means health, strength, life itself, it would seem — supreme folly. If a shipwrecked sailor were to slip voluntarily from his rude raft of spars in mid-ocean, thrust it far from him in disgust that it were not a finely upholstered boat, and, forsaking it, trust himself alone to the powers of winds and waves and darkness, it would seem — contempt for the mercies left him. If we were to see a man idly roll a hundred dollar bill into a splint, hold a lighted match to it and watch the charred fragments fall to the floor as a dead memorial of uselessness, — we would remember it for a lifetime. We would tell the story many times in the years to come. We would dilate on the waste, the folly, the great possibilities for good and helpfulness wantonly sacrificed to vanity and vandalism. In our every-day life there are countless instances of happiness thrown away just as foolishly for a trifle, — perhaps but the puny gratification of a moment. It seems more hopelessly inexcusable than to cast aside a pearl and save the empty, useless oyster shell that enclosed the treasure. * From The Crown of Individuality. Copyright, 1909, by Fleming H. Revell Company.

THE CROWN OF INDIVIDUALITY. 613 Our happiness rarely dies a natural death. We slay it with our own hand, or others kill it for us. The veriest trifle may keep it alive, the veriest trifle may kill it, and yet selfishly, blindly, we still the heart of our own happiness or that of others. We may even irreverently throw the blame on the scheme of the universe — when we alone are at fault. Happiness does not consist of what we have but what we are; not in our possessions but in our attitude towards them. It is the serenity of the soul in the presence of a present joy. It is not absolute, requiring certain fixed conditions; it is relative. What would be a fast for one might prove a royal feast for another. Happiness does not always require success, prosperity or attainment. It is often the joy of hopeful struggle, consecration of purpose and energy to some good end. Real happiness ever has its root in unselfishness— its blossom in love of some kind. We make or mar our own happiness and that of others to a larger degree than we are willing to admit. It is easier to pose as victim of conditions than to prove oneself victor. The soul of our happiness may be— love. This love may be so fine and great and simple and it so fills our life that it leaves no room for pain, as light crowds out darkness. It may, with its Midas touch, turn even our trials and troubles into the gold of sweetness, strength and consolation. It may stand ever between us and the world— as a bulwark keeps back the sea. It may become to us an angel of hope holding our hand with gentle pressure when the clouds hang low, sustaining us when the way of life seems hard. This honest love may ever trust us; forgiving and forgetting may be its atmosphere. It may inspire us, recreate us, give wings to us when downcast, a new shield to faith and new heart to energy. We may have this great happiness all our own, firm in our grasp, yet for a mere trifle— we may throw it away, or let it fall gradually from us— like pearls dropping, one by one, silent and unnoted, from a broken necklace. We let some petty, mean trait of ours, some weakness we should master through self-control, cheat us of our happiness. We have held some penny of momemtary satisfaction so close to our eyes that it eclipses the sun of our happiness. A foolish jealousy

614 IMPROVEMENT ERA. that deadened our ears to explanation, that shut our eyes to the truth and that stilled our tongue when it would speak the words of faith we could hardly keep back — we have let this jealousy, this snap judgment, expressive not of real love but of wounded pride, swallow up our happiness —as the ocean engulfs a treasure ship. We may let idle gossip, false sympathy, imbecile advice from those who know absolutely nothing about our real condition, shut us from love and faith, breed doubt and suspicion, and choke trust as by the fumes of some noxious gas. We may let some other folly which comes from our false interpretation cheat us of our happiness like one ignorant of the meaning of a deed — signing away a fortune. And when it is all over we may not have the moral courage to go back, as we should. When later, conscience holds, in a bitter hour of realization and loneliness, its sad post-mortem over the dead happiness, it may be very poor satisfaction to know that we killed a love that we needed and that needed us— for such a trifle. Friendship that meant much in our happiness, that was rest, refuge and joy, may be thrown away for a trifle. Friends, real friends, are rare in the individual life. We cannot have many of them. They do not come in bunches like bananas. They are never found ready-made at all. They are formed by weathering the same gales of fate together, by standing the heat of conflict together, by kinship of mind and heart, by common interest in a common ideal, by basic understanding, mutual dependence, thorough respect and loyalty that grows stronger as need grows greater. Acquaintances we may have many, but acquaintanceship is — merely the grapes of possibility from which the rich wine of friendship is aged and mellowed. Friends are usually necessary to happiness. Robinson Crusoe could hardly have been genuinely happy in his isolation, no matter how he kept his optimism breathing by frequent applications of oxygen from the tank of his philosophy. Even love does not long satisfy unless there is in it real friendship and companionship. Love is, in reality, only a supreme, unique brand of perfected friendship. But we may throw this element in happiness away in a mood of selfishness and blindness. For the empty pleasure of a clever, cutting taunt we may

THE CROWN OF INDIVIDUALITY. 615 give a stab-thrust that may kill a friendship. We may take the kindly expressions of our friend as a matter of course, demanding as a right what belongs to us as a courtesy. You cannot force a spontaneity any more than you can make the bud a full-blown rose by forcibly opening its petals. The bud becomes a rose by natural expansion from within. A friend's need is our opportunity. A momentary neglect or coolness at a psychologic moment, when the tired heart needs sympathy, encouragement or help to the utmost, may begin the death of a friendship. Some, people like the dividends on friendship, but not its assessments. They really do not n_eed a friend, they want a bank. When there is not mutual helpfulness — not necessarily the same in kind or in degree, but the helpfulness in which each gives freely his best to the other, as naturally as a flower exhales perfume — the friendship is like a patent that is nearing its time of expiration. Ingratitude kills friendship or rapidly attenuates it to a point where it must die of anasmia. If we value our happiness or our friend, let us gladly expend the time, energy and thought required to keep the relationship — free, clear, fresh-running as a mountain brook. An idle, flippant breach of confidence, at a moment when it seemed almost calculated treachery, may kill a friendship or a happiness growing for years. A hasty surrender to temper, a sudden heat of anger, may be followed by a drop of sixty degrees in the temperature of a relation between two people. It may destroy a real happiness as a blizzard may, in a single night, ruin a fruit field. There may be an unkind letter, a cruel fling of cynicism, or an unjust slur or sneer that meant only venting our own sad disappointment, chagrin or deferred hope, on an innocent friend. We may have been conscious of the injustice before the words were cold on our lips, but some mean streak in our nature may have kept us from calling them back. We are often happy in our hopes, our plans, our purposes or our possessions and let the envy of another poison the well-spring of our happiness. Envy is a drug that stupefies energy. It does not give us what seems so beautiful to us merely because it belongs to another. The very thing we desire might not fit us nor

6 16 IMPRO VEMENT ERA . agree with us even if we could get it. Have you ever noticed how much more interesting your neighbor's paper looks than your own, as you let your eye wander to what your seat-mate is reading? Have you ever felt that the meal some one else has ordered looks much more appetizing than yours, even though you could have had precisely the same if you had desired? Happiness does not come from comparison of our lives with others; we have our own life to live at its best, not — the lives of others. Let us get what we can from our own paper, our own meal, our own life. Let us live so intently, so bounteously that the joy from oar life will overflow into others, will make us better able to help others, will transform us into castles of refuge to those who need us. Nursing a grievance does not bring us happiness. Being hypersensitive to the opinions others have of us puts us into the false position of making their approval our court of appeals instead of our own conscience and self-respect. False pride too often betrays us into surrendering the" realities of life for the poor satisfaction of an hour. Some persons are so busy putting poultices on their wounded vanity that they let their happiness die of inanition. Living each day at our best, simply, sincerely, sweetly, is the surest way to win happiness and — to hold it. (The next article in this series, "Sitting in the Seat of Judgment," will appear in the June number of the Era.) We Want Men of Deeds. Men of deeds are what we want today. The man who says, "This should be done," is generally one who always shirks. Let him rather say to his fellowmen, "Come, let us push along." He does not wait for his brother to accomplish that which it is his own duty to do. What would the world's progress have been today if all men had lagged ■ behind with no one daring to take the lead upon a better road? Let us, then, join hands to be leaders and doers of what we teach, so that our deeds may shine forth as beacon lights on the mountains of achievement unto which the world of men shall long to come. — W. J.