Happiness as Found in Forethought Minus FearthoughtFletcher, Horace
Philosophy
Happiness as Found in Forethought Minus Fearthought
Fletcher, Horace
Fear; Happiness
The point-of-view has much to do with the sting of pain. Whoever has
suffered that severest of all spankings, the water spanking incident to
a clumsy dive, or a wrongly-calculated somersault into the water from
a wharf, or from a natatorium springboard, will remember that the pain
of it is not half so hard to bear as the form of parental correction
called by the same name, that in itself is not nearly so severe.
Sensitiveness to pain is largely due to the fear of pain, and a
reversal of the accustomed attitude towards fear will have an immediate
effect upon the severity of pain by mitigating much of its sting.
Christian scientists, mental scientists, spiritual scientists, faith
curists, and all others who practice mental therapeutics in physical
diseases, escape much suffering in this way, and the happy result of
this attitude towards pain serves to strengthen their faith.
Whatever the cause of the relief, it is good, for it teaches, in a most
practical way, the potency of thought in overcoming, or, dismissing,
real pain as well as all imaginary evil, and also the possibility
of eliminating fearthought from the mental equipment, by showing
how impotent to harm are the realities that inspire it, when it is
prevented from exaggerating them.
UNHAPPY UNLESS MISERABLE.
There are some persons, in fact, a great many persons, who are not
happy unless they have real or fancied cause for complaint. Martyrdom
is the recreation of such people and they are liable to be more greedy
for recreation than those whose recreation is of a joyous sort.
It is certainly a misplaced kindness to impose unwelcome attentions on
any one. In the category of nuisances unwelcome attentions are perhaps
the most disagreeable, and to cram joy down the maw of one who has no
taste for it, is as rude, and even vulgar, as insisting that he shall
eat something that is nauseating to him.
It is true that persons who gloat over misery; who love to mope about
in grave-yards; and are forever telling grewsome tales for the
supposed delectation of their victims, are not as agreeable to others
as they seem to be to themselves, and their presence at festivals and
other ostensibly joyous occasions may be looked on as discordant, and,
as such, out of place.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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