Happiness Is No Accident…

“Happiness is a habit,” said Elbert Hubbard, “cultivate it.” Margaret Lee Runbeck used this same thought. She was trying to tell another mother what to teach a son who would someday become the husband of her new-born daughter — a mother and a son whom she had never seen. “I hope you’re bringing up a good husband for my daughter…” she said. “I ask you, first of all’ to bring him up without illusions… The world as it is is not intolerable. It is beautiful… But the thing to remember is that the world is in process… And we are here to help it… One thing we’re going to ask critically about your family…” she continued, “we are going to expect you to be happy people… We have no patience with chronic unhappiness; we consider it bad manners and a sin. We know quite soberly that disasters may happen to all of us. But…whatever happens, we…go on… We must regard unhappiness as a temporary illness — nothing to be condoned and encouraged, but something to be cured just as quickly and as intelligently as is possible. We propose to do this by trying to understand what happiness is. It is no accident…. Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling. Happiness is a habit, to be established early. So let your child laugh…. Teach him to enjoy many different kinds of things. Make him know that fun is something you have’ not something you watch.” So wrote one mother to another, to tell her how to raise a husband for her daughter. There are limits to what we can give our children. With changes of fortune and misfortune, some things cannot be certain. We all have problems. We all have disappointments — things to overcome, things to accept, things to learn to live with, things to adjust to. But even if not for ourselves, we have an obligation to be happy for others, and to keep unhappiness from becoming chronic. Every child has a right to happiness at home. Everyone has a right to expect happiness at home — and an obligation to contribute to it. “Happiness is a habit — cultivate it.”