The Happiness That Faces Facts

Within a framework of principles, it is the variability among men, the differences as well as the likenesses, that permit happiness to be possible — for if all wanted to do the same things at the same time in the same way, if all chose the same kind of people as partners, nor only would life be monotonous, but it would also present some impossible problems. In speaking of the Duty of Happiness, Sir John Lubbock said this sentence: “…the world would be better and brighter if our teachers would dwell on the duty of happiness as well as on the happiness of duty. —” And then he added: — “…for we ought to be as cheerful as we can, if only because to be happy ourselves is a most effectual contribution to the happiness of others… To be bright and cheerful often requires an effort; there is a certain art in keeping ourselves happy: and in this respect, as in others, we require to watch over and manage ourselves almost as if we were somebody else… Life… certainly may be, and ought to be, bright, interesting, and happy… If we do our best; if we do not magnify trifling troubles; if we look resolutely… at things as they really are; if we avail ourselves of the manifold blessings which surround us; we cannot but feel that life is… a glorious inheritance.”¹ To this we would add this word from Isaac Walton: “Let not the blessings we receive daily from God make us not to value or not praise him because they be common; …What would a blind man give to see the pleasant rivers and meadows and flowers and fountains.”² We would reaffirm the eternal fact that the Lord God, our Father, who made us in Him image, meant us to be happy — not the happiness of ignorance, but the happiness that seeks truth, that solves problems, that faces facts — the happiness which is grateful for “the extent to which we can make ourselves what we wish to be;…”¹ —the happiness that deeply endures, with an honest working at life, and with a conviction that its opportunities are limitless and everlasting.