Part 5
“There are,” says Margaret Deland, “as many opinions of happiness as there are people in the world, but the first and most important distinction which we must make is this: happiness is a spiritual possession and is independent of material things. Happiness is thinking straight and seeing clear and having a true perception of the value of things.”
It takes us a long time to find out that happiness is a state of mind which can be cultivated rather than the result of conditions outside ourselves. The little child does not know that it is seeing its happiest days, the school-girl does not understand how happy she is, the young mother seldom realizes her own happiness; they are all looking forward with eagerness to some happiness to come. Contentment is the truest happiness, and yet if we were always simply content with our lot from babyhood up, where would be the world’s progress? It is the eager reaching forward for something better that brings progress, which, alas! is not always synonymous with happiness.
But it is our duty to cultivate happiness, just the same. We can form the habit of cheerfulness and hopefulness and a courageous spirit which shall become, in time, the very essence of happiness, or at least a very good substitute for it. The woman who goes whining through life, the woman who is envious or self-conscious or unloving may fasten herself into a steel armor of endurance of this life, but she cannot hope to be happy; but the woman who accepts gladly the work close at her hand, and thanks God for it, plants sunshine in her own soul and radiates happiness from the heart.
More than ever women are learning to find and give out their happiness in the home. I once heard some excellent advice given by a speaker on domestic science: “I hold that it is the duty of every woman to make of her own body the strongest, best machine possible; and I believe that one of the great lessons to be taught to the women of America to-day is care of themselves. I wish I could reach out, not only to all the girls in the land, but to all the mothers as well, and could say to them, ‘It is your duty to your family, to your neighbors, to your Maker, to give yourself the strongest body possible.’
“I wish the mothers would hear this, and could understand that the work which gives them too little sleep, or allows them no time for quiet eating of their food, which crowds them daily with nervous anxiety as to whether or not the work will all be accomplished, is the work which fills our insane asylums with broken-down women, that makes our mothers unable to give to their daughters the love, the care and attention that girls need in their growing years. A great good might be accomplished if it could be proved to women that kitchen utensils cost less than coffins, and that money paid for necessary help in the household is more profitable than money paid to doctors and nurses.”
No mother has a right to wear herself out physically so that she cannot be the central sun of the little system known as the family. My mother’s cheerfulness and courage and faith in God are my richest inheritances, and if I have any faculty for happiness it is owing to her wonderful example. The average woman worries too much and fails to hold herself in the atmosphere of peace which is her rightful sphere if she chooses to enter in and possess it. “The art of growing old gracefully” is mastered when a woman realizes what true happiness is, and growing old has no further terrors for her.
There are plenty of shadows to be seen if we fix our vision on them instead of on the sunlight beyond and around them; but why not fasten our gaze on the glowing, life-giving sunshine instead? There is sorrow and grief in the world and some of it has come first or last to you and me; but why let it darken all our days, when Infinite love surrounds us and will give us everlasting peace if we but claim it? Adversity may come, but it cannot take away the serenity of the soul. Let us see to it that we fortify ourselves with that inner sense which constitutes true happiness.
“The duty of happiness” is something we owe to our own souls as much as to those around us. Let us find that centre of the whirlpool of life where perfect calm ever prevails.
“Let nothing make thee sad or fretful, Or too regretful, Be still; What God hath ordered must be right, Then find in it thine own delight, My will.
“Why shouldst thou fill to-day with sorrow About to-morrow, My heart? One watches all with care most true, Doubt not that He will give thee, too, Thy part.
“Only be steadfast; never waver; Nor seek earth’s favor, But rest. Thou knowest what God’s will must be For all His creatures, so for thee The best.”
IX
ON WORRY
“In my life,” said a woman, “I have worried much, but never have I worried about the right thing or the right situation. The thing to worry about always turned out something different from what I spent my energy upon. One day this view of the worry question occurred forcibly to my mind, and the ridiculous waste of time and strength appalled me. I have never had a worry since.”
Another woman whom I know came to a realization of the same truth a few years ago in much the same way. She worried all the time about something—and there is always a Something to be worried about if we give way to it. She found one day that this habit of crossing a bridge before she came to it—and perhaps it would never be come up to—was making her old before her time. She realized suddenly that she was living at a tremendously high tension—that she was in a perpetual hurry—that she could no longer enjoy a good play or a good book or a good concert without a guilty look every now and then at her watch—that she could not even ride in a horse-car without bracing herself, as if by that she could propel the thing and reach her destination sooner.
And then she realized that she was wasting Life—that she was missing half of all the daily beauty that lay around her, and that existence had become for her merely tension. Just then Annie Payson Call’s “Power Through Repose” fell into her hands, and she decided to adopt a new motto, “Relax.” She stopped worrying, teaching herself to remember that worrying helps no cause and no event, until she actually comes up to it, and then it is too late. She began to look for enjoyment and beauty in the little things of life. She began to relax, even on horse-cars. To-day she is the embodiment not only of calmness, but of courage. She has forgotten that she ever had nerves. She is happy. She relaxed.
In that way we can keep our youth and defy wrinkles. Doctors can tell you—if complexion beautifiers won’t—that ninety-nine hundredths of the wrinkles and the unwelcome crow’s-feet on women’s faces are caused by Worry. So are one-half the illnesses—wherein lies the power of mental and “Christian” science. We can imagine ourselves into heaven if we will, or we can worry ourselves into that other place—unmentionable in polite circles—but we cannot reverse that process. The spirit with which we accept life makes all the difference. We can take up burdens groaning, “Oh, how shall I ever bear you?” or laughing, “Don’t think you can get the better of me.”
Most women live in a state of mental turmoil the greater part of their lives. Self-poise seems to be the rarest of virtues among women. We allow ourselves to be continually stirred up over trifles, to be annoyed by things not worth minding. We allow petty criticisms to burn into our very souls. A disparaging word, a thoughtless remark, the slightest opposition to our pet scheme, are allowed to disturb the unruffled peace that is our birthright, and we either suffer agonies in silence or we let ourselves down to undignified wrangling.
Or, if we have no immediate cause for trouble outside ourselves, we worry. As Helen Watterson Moody neatly puts it: “Women are disposed to take things too seriously and to dissipate vital force in that nervous debauch known as worrying.” And she very wisely goes on to say that every woman ought to be obliged by some law to spend an hour or two a day absolutely alone and unrelaxed, that the whirling mind and quivering nerves might hush themselves with the blessedness of silence.
Self-poise would be the natural result, however impractical the proposition may appear. Some women are born with the gift of self-poise; but most of us have to acquire it or, worse, get along the best or the worst way we can without. It is never thrust upon us.
Once in a while we come across a woman who is blessed with it; and oh, what a comfortable creature she is—comfortable and comforting. Trying situations and trying people are as nothing to her. Some one has likened this power to keep one’s poise to an oil which makes the machinery of life run smoothly. Better than that, it is an elevated plane that holds those who walk thereon far above the mire of petty smallnesses of wrong living and thinking.
There is a man in Boston who has, naturally, a quick, irritable temper, but who is noted for his uniform gentleness and patience in dealing with the hundreds of people with whom he comes in contact every day. In his office hangs a placard with the following inscription, which I recommend to housekeepers, mothers, business women and everybody else. It runs thus:
“An American poet has said:
“‘It’s easy enough to be pleasant When life flows along like a song; But the man worth while Is the man who will smile When everything goes dead wrong.’
“P.S.—This applies to women also.”
After all, it is a question of mind-discipline. Let us once realize that we lack this power over ourselves and determine to acquire it, and we are in a fair way to be sweeter and better.
There might be classes established for the teaching of self-poise to all the wrangling women, all the sensitive women, all the over-ambitious women, all the selfish women. But, dear me! how many of us could say we are beyond the need of joining? And, besides, there are no Marcus Aureliuses in the teachers’ bureaus, just now, either.
We are placed in the scheme of life just where we were meant to be. Now, then, let us live it out. What is meant for us to do, let us do; but let us not worry over what is not meant for us. It depends on us whether we take this for a world of honest, cheerful work, or a world of hard labor. It is all character-building. Ever think of that? All character-building.
All the world needs of us, all God asks of us, is that we live out our own lives truly, faithfully, earnestly and the best we possibly can. It is for us to find out how—not sit down or hamper our work with worrying about the how.
There are two ways of walking through the world—plodding dejectedly along with our eyes on the muddy road, seeing only the obstacles in our way and feeling only the burdens on our backs; or holding our heads high, seeing the beautiful broad sky above, smelling the scent of flowers, tasting the delights of living and feeling the love of God. Which shall we choose?
A pleasant face carries joy and sheds sunshine. A worried, harassed countenance may make a whole roomful miserable. Every happy thought lends a pleasant line to the face, and there is no excuse for looking otherwise. All girls are more or less pretty at twenty; but it has been her own fault if the woman of fifty has not the best kind of beauty—that indefinable sweetness of graciousness that reflects itself in every feature of the face. Happiness is ours if we will but reach out for our small share and make the most of it. But if we reject it, saying, “What have we in common with thee?” we deserve to be miserable, and we are. More than that, we are disagreeable to other people; and in this world that is a thing we ought to consider.
Nothing that other people say or do can affect us much unless we let it, and it is much easier not to be troubled by outside worries—and all worries are outside our true lives—than to nurse trouble.
Did you ever try to help a person who will not be helped? To shed sunshine into a soul that will not empty itself or be emptied of shadows? Is there anything more discouraging? But after all, the best thing we can do for our friends is to be good and fine and true. Nothing tells like living. “The kingdom of heaven” is within. When we truly desire the best, we lose the certainty that it is revealed only to us and to those who agree with us.
God opens a great fountain of truth, that shows itself in many springs; we hold our cups for its waters of life, and our cups are of many shapes, molded by our own hands and decorated with our own thoughts; but they all hold living water, and the shape or pattern of the cup signifies nothing. If we keep this thought in mind, we shall not be overmuch disturbed that we cannot rule our world. As time goes on we change our cups; we learn to make them of larger mold and of more beautiful pattern, but however much we may draw from the fountain, its flow does not diminish, and no one is denied the water of life.
It is of no importance whether you or I see first the vision for which the world waits. The important thing is that we do not insist that others shall see it before their time. Emerson says: “God screens us evermore from premature ideas. Our eyes are holden, that we cannot see things that stare us in the face until the hour arrives when the mind is ripened; then we behold them, and the time that we saw them not is like a dream.” We wait for the child. We are tenderly patient while he stumbles in learning to walk, patient also when we find that he must develop his character by his own experiences, and not by ours. Let us be patient with each other and with the world.
Nobody can make us happy. It all depends upon ourselves; and by the same token nobody can make us unhappy. What will you take from life’s menu? a strengthening feast of joy and sweetness, or the blighting, unsatisfying fare of bitterness and discouragement? It’s just for you to choose. And always remember that your song may cheer some one behind you whose courage is sinking low.
“Dear restless heart, be still, for peace is God’s own smile, His love can every wrong and sorrow reconcile; Just love and love and love and calmly wait awhile.
“Dear restless heart, be still; don’t fret and worry so; God hath a thousand ways His love and help to show; Just trust and trust and trust until His will you know.”
X
ON SOLITUDE
It is the custom to cry out against the lack of originality in woman; and it is quite true that those who have achieved it have first known the blessedness of solitude. It is the only way. It is difficult for the average woman to realize it, but she either takes too much from or gives too much to her friends. But the best and truest friendships are perhaps those which cannot stand the crucial test of a perpetual companionship. Just because one happens to know the power of giving out much, of feeling intensely, of being for the time so very much to those for whom she cares—precisely for this reason will she need at times to draw into herself, to go away, to be alone, to rest.
Especially is this true if those friends have the sympathetic temperament which takes its color partly from its surroundings. Your happiness, then, becomes partly theirs; they share in your anxiety, your sorrow, your depression—in everything, in fact, that belongs to you. In like manner they compel you to feel with them; and the result, perhaps, hardly recognized at the time, is to make you aware that you have been interested most intensely, that you have given out without intending it, something almost too intimate and too much your own to be so given.
Some of the bitterest lessons in life are learned through such intimacies. Sometimes we refuse to recognize those friends who take all and give nothing, until they have absorbed everything and we are left like a dry sponge to realize their unfaithfulness. But it is through such lessons that we come to know the chaff from the wheat and to realize the need of an inner strength which shall enable us to stand upon our own feet. Hence it is that even friends who know each other through and through, and who are congenial down to the very lightest mood, ought still to shun a life that will bring them into too close relationship and prevent their individual development.
Women have been slow to realize this. For generations women have been sheltered, protected and cared for until they have been contented to dwell in a state of contented babyhood. Think for an instant of a boy, surrounded from infancy with the influences that have enveloped girlhood. Keep him done up in cotton wool throughout childhood and youth, taught never to raise his voice for fear of being “unladylike,” never to assert his rights, never to be himself and to accept without question the decision and opinions of others on all topics outside the nursery. Repeat this experience with successive generations of boys, and where would your “superiority of man” be?
On the other hand, let your girls out into the sunlight and air, teach them the free use of muscles and mind, and reprove them not if, in the beginning, they are crude, and women will cease to be the complacent and gregarious beings they have been; they will cease to worship the fetish of Who is Who and What is What; they will cease to fear the awful and unblinking eye of Society and be ready to seek and find themselves.
Women are needed in all good work more to-day than ever before. Let us remember, then, the more we are in ourselves the more we can do for others. There is nothing greater in life, nothing greater in Christianity than this great principle of service and love for others. Kindliness, helpfulness, service; these three were never more needed than now. The great-hearted, sympathetic, charitable, brave, intelligent woman is needed everywhere, in the home as much, yes, more than in public service. It is hers to enlarge her own horizons and to lose her pettiness by loyal, intelligent service. The narrow, self-centered mother cannot do for her family what the mother does who possesses a trained and logical mind. It is not only the value of the moral judgment which suffers from a lack of privacy and individual freedom; it is the quality of the feminine mind itself which degenerates by overcrowding.
The hearthstone is no less sacred because intelligence reigns there; the touch of woman’s hand is no less tender because she studies Shakespeare and proposes measures for the beautifying of her town and the alleviation of the sufferings of its people; the press of baby fingers upon the mother’s brow will ever be dearer than the plaudits of the multitude.
But we should not forget that we need to have our horizons broadened. We need to accustom ourselves to larger views of life and of work. So long as our lives are bounded by our towns, or even our own States—so long are we neglecting our opportunities. Naturally, we are most interested in the things around us, and our own particular kind of work seems to us the greatest thing of the kind. But if we shut ourselves up in that, we cannot grow. We must be interested to know what others are doing, and if they are getting more out of life, or, more important yet, putting more into life, than we.
We cannot do this by confining our interests and sympathies to the territory which is actually bounded by the geographical horizon that surrounds our home. We may not be able to actually _do_ much for ours, but there is no limit to what we may be interested in. And the larger our interests the larger are we. It is impossible for us to accustom ourselves to large views of life and broad sympathies for the world’s charities and remain narrow and petty ourselves.
Of course, it was a little Boston girl, sitting at the family dinner table while her father and his friends carried on a serious discussion as to the child of nowadays. They were lamenting the fact that the children to-day seem so blasé, so little affected by things grave or gay. “Why,” said the father, “my children read without a tear, books that used to make me weep! It seems as if all emotion has gone out of them.” Whereupon our little friend looked up and remarked, with overpowering dignity, “Oh, papa, it is not that emotion has gone out, but self-control has come in.” Wasn’t the child right? This is an age of self-control. It is supposed to be the correct thing to hide our emotions, and, like most correct things, it is often carried too far. How often we hear people wax eloquent, even to tears, over the help they have received from some friend who is no longer with them on earth—some quiet, unseen personality, whose power over their lives they now fully realize. Are we not sometimes tempted to wonder, in listening to such tributes, how often in their lifetime they received such devotion, such recognition? Do we not catch ourselves hoping that they used sometimes to put their arms about their mother and say, “What a good mother you are to me!” But how sadly true it is that the glowing tribute, the costly monument, the piled-up roses, are often attempts to atone for lost opportunities.
He was a wise man who said, “Give me a little taffy now rather than a lot of epitaphy later on.” Not “taffy,” but honest appreciation is due the woman who goes patiently day after day about her business, not worrying about the future, not getting easily discouraged, and knowing just how to conserve herself for their best interests.
We might all be helped by adopting the following, which was put forth some years ago as a “Business Man’s New Year Endeavor,” although I cannot see why it will not do for an every-day endeavor for every woman: