Above all, people who are living healthy, outdoor lives are much more
prone to take a happy view of life, to see the bright side of things
and to radiate good will and sunshine than those who are overmuch in
the house. The cheerful givers whom the Lord loves come especially
from among these. A great many of the people who want to pour out
their ills perennially, because they like to indulge their self-pity
by rolling the delectable morsels of their sufferings under their
tongues, and who go around seeking consolation and sympathy whenever
they are in even slight trouble are indoor people. They occur
especially among those who spend a good deal of {322} time sitting
down and not exercising their bodies enough. The good old rule _ora et
labora_ is an extremely valuable precept, not only for the next world
but also for this. Pray and labor, but be sure that labor gets a fair
share of the time and be sure that the body has enough exercise to
keep it going and to keep its functions in good condition, otherwise
the prayer will be disturbed and life will be far from happy.
Happiness comes to those who are healthily tired every day. Long ago
Dooley said in one of those wise sayings of his which made even the
_London Times_ declare that the wisest man that was writing English in
our day wrote under the name of Dooley in Chicago, that the one thing
above all that made life worth living was to be tired enough at the
end of every day so that one would sleep well every night. Without
that life is indeed a burden.
The practice of hard work, some of it physical, is a very good rule
for the physical as well as the spiritual life. A hard-working man has
little time to be grouchy and to throw wet blankets over the good that
others are trying to do. He is likely to be a lifter and not a leaner,
a doer and not a talker. Nothing keeps people from finding fault so
well as having so much to do that they can scarcely find the time in
which to do it all. Especially is this important for those who have to
spend a good deal of time in each other's company, and who must learn
to bear with each other's faults and go on with their own work to the
best of their ability. It must not be forgotten that a great many of
the faults of others are to be attributed rather to the state of their
health than to their disposition, and once this is rightly understood
charity will readily help us to gloss them over or forgive them. Any
one who makes his own faults the subject of excuse {323} on the score
of health, when his health is something that by a little care he could
improve, is of course imposing on himself if he does it at all
deliberately, and he is trying to impose on good nature if he thinks
that other people do not appreciate that his ill health is really an
excuse and not a reason for his faults.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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