Prescription for the Heavyhearted…

Sometimes we suffer the symptoms of diseases we don’t have. And sometimes we suffer the symptoms of unhappiness for insufficient reasons. Often unhappiness comes from overemphasizing the negative side of situations. This is easy to do, since time seems to move more swiftly when we are happy and more slowly when we are heavyhearted. And so we might suppose that we are unhappy more than we are.

Life isn’t easy at all times for any of us. And if for someone else if for anyone else it seems to us to be so, it is only because we don’t know enough; it is only because there is a side we fail to see. We are all subject to uncertainties and to some adverse circumstances, some in one way, and some in another.

Furthermore, no matter what we have, it seems that there are always some things we want. But those who have what we want or what we think we want are not necessarily happier than we are.

Happiness is not confined to any material set of circumstances. It is not guaranteed by affluence or ease. It is not the monopoly of any place or people. Its component parts, or some of them at least, are faith and work, gratitude, a sincere purpose, a sense of being wanted, and the ability to see the hopeful side.

All these elements are indispensable, but faith and useful willing work would seem to underlie all else faith in the purpose and providence of God, faith in life, and in its everlasting plan and purpose and work: work not only to satisfy physical wants, but work for the sense of service, and for the sense of accomplishment work because men are so made that they cannot be as happy without willing work as they can be with it. The right to work is God-given, and the obligation also, and the necessity for it is inherent in man’s very nature.

Paradoxically, there is another element that enters in, and that is this: Some of the people we think might not have cause, comparatively, to be as happy as some others, are often among the happiest, most grateful people there are, perhaps because their sense of values has been stripped of some of the superficialities, perhaps because they have learned the great blessing of simple essentials.

It all adds up to the fact that we have more reason to be happy than we sometimes suppose, and to realize it we need only lose some of the things we have or see someone who has never had some of the things we have and we may well find the contrast convincing.