I read today of a friend who walked home with a workman. This is the
workman's story: He had a son who was making a record in school. He had
two daughters who helped their mother; he had a cottage, a little yard,
a few flowers, a garden. He worked hard in a garage by day, and in the
evening he cultivated his flowers, his garden, and his family. He had
health, plus contentment a-plenty. His possessions were few and the care
of them consequently a negligible effort.
Happiness flowed in the cracks of his door. Smiles were on his lips, joy
in his heart, love in his bosom; that's the story my friend heard.
Then came a friend in an automobile on his way home from the club. He
picked up my friend, and unfolded to him a tale of woe, misery and
discontent.
This club man had money, automobiles, social standing, possessions, and
all the objects and material things envious persons covet--yet he was
unhappy. His whole life was spent chasing happiness, but his sixty
horsepower auto wasn't fast enough to catch it.
The poor man I have told you about was the man who washed the club man's
auto.
The strenuous pleasure seeker fails to get happiness; that is an
inexorable law. He develops into a pessimist with an acrid, satirical
disgust at all the simple, wholesome, worth-while, real things in life.
This is not a new discovery of mine; it's an old truth. Read
Ecclesiastes, the pessimistic chronicle of the Bible, and you'll learn
what comes to the pleasure-chaser, and you will know about "vanity and
vexation of spirit."
[Sidenote: Making Others Happy.]
Do something for somebody. Engage in moves and enterprises that will be
of service to the community and help the uplift of mankind. This making
others happy is a positive insurance and guarantee of your own
happiness.
You must keep a stiff upper lip, a stiff backbone; you must forget the
wishbone and the envious heart.
Paul had trials, setbacks, hardships and hard labors; he had defeats and
discouragements and still the record shows he was "always rejoicing."
Paul was a man of Pep. In the dungeon, with his feet in stocks, he sang
songs and rejoiced. Paul was happy, ever and always, not because he
strove to get happiness, but because he had dedicated his life to the
service of mankind.
The real hero, the real man of fame, the real man of popularity, doesn't
arrive by setting out on a quest for any of these things; the result is
incidental.
The real hero forgets self first of all; that is the essential step to
greatness.
Washington at Valley Forge had no thought that his acts there would
furnish inspiration for a picture that would endure for generations.
Lincoln, the care-worn, tired, noble man, in his speech at Gettysburg,
never dreamed that that speech would stamp him as a master of words and
thought, in the hearts of his country-men. He thought not of self. He
was trying to soothe wounds, cheer troubled spirits, and give courage to
those who had been so long in shadowland.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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