How to be Happy

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 150, 22 December 1922, Page 14

How to be Happy

0 Famous Novelist's Views o 1 I

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All happiness in life is based upon the solid appreciation of what life really is, holds Edgar Wallace, .. the popular English novelist,/and in "John o' London's Weekly" he describes how "Life is unconscious by my code. When I am not conscious^ I am dead. When I am conscious, it is my job to extract from every. Second of 'liteness' a sense of satisfaction:" Continuing, Edg«to' .Wallace says :—'When I was a small boy selling newspapers at the corner of Ludgate Circus there came to. hi 6 one" 1 afternoon—trade being slack, for the flat race season was done with—a peculiar sense of satisfaction that I was. alive.. I think it had its" origin in a funeral I had attended a few days before—a small boy relative, whose funeral c'ai'd, supplied by the undertakers and adorned with a small poem, I carried in- my pocket for yea.rs. And t remerftbet saying to. myself, .'Well,. I'm. herei!' .And then''and there Was founded hiy" fhilos6phy. I have Said a thousand times since, "Well, I'm here." I have said it on sun-baked battlefields after the firing had died down. -L nave said it when I have seen a fdftiihe swept away' in the mad speculation which followed the Boer War. * I have said it when £25,000. waa lost to hie by the shortest of heads one dark day at- Newmarket. About a year ago 1 totted up all my I',losses (they weren't really, losses—l call them 'faii-ures-.to-gain'),,.and found, tis-fc with any kind of |uck I should be worth'£6oo,ooo. And seeing this'impressive total, I.said, almost mechanically, 'Well, we're here.!' *—for how, there are. others' who are Me. . ■ • To be Ijappy you must, know .where true, happiness lies. Men spend, their lives piling up wealth, believing that at jome altitude complete satisfaction is to oe found'!' They leani in the grey days of age that the oniyjiappihess for them is to go on piling; They have lived sourly,. meanly,; and find their -. reward -neithei; sweet nor generous. There are men and women who can nevsr be. liapp'y. They arc oursed from birth with a spiritual deformity which precludes any form of satisfaction,- It is a physical impossibility for a man or woman to be happy without a'sense of liuniour. .'.-. ,", TWO RULES.- ", .'.'. : . But these poor; crippled souls are few. I. am going to. be ,yery trite arid. say that the first ruie of happiness is to find pleasure, in. the- blessings ■ which, arri yours. The marl wild is well and strong too often takes, his health fot. granted/ arid growls because jie ifc riot rich.- The marl arid woman living in. a poky country town 1 Ihoan for the hectic pleasure*, the the"atres: and cinemas of London j f^e Londoner, who has a cinema and theatre -round the corner sighs for the green fields and the cabbage" life of the country. , Wanting somethirig else/ because it is something else; is an obstacle to happiness; ■"...-.. . The second rule is never to be ; s&r'ry for yourself. If ydu allow self-pity. to cdmp into your Hfe-^GOd help ydu! The third arid not the least important rule is- "never envy anybody." The foiifth is to cut the word "if", from youf speculations/ -'-'if I had' oniy done this!" or "If I had only done that!" It is so pufpDspless and futile, and so nearly approaching self-pity!'..., : -'■ .'YON THE. ICE-RUN. Thß art bf being happy is .the art of perspective. The thinjs that cqiint are 1 so few aild so: vital: They- are indcpeit; derib -Of worldly possessions, success, Approval, or envy of yoUf lellows or" attainment. I ani happier when I Work than .-when I receive' rfionfey for Work. I am happier meeting the trains - .which bring my. childi'en from suhOol than in .reading a, laudatory,notice of a story I have, written. I am hippiest Of '• all when, rhaving risked my forty-&even-year*old neck on the long ' ice'-ruh at CaiiXj I find that niy small daughter has beaten my time by five seconds. "I ijm here!" say I. at the top of the run: and^ this means that I Have at any fate freed myself from the f6gs and drizzles of London,-'"I am here!" I say fit the foot of. the run f rheafling-that I have gob down alive: . •WHY PEOPLE ABE.NOT 1 HAPPY. lit niy life* spent a-little strangely, I have met and studied, men arid wbmeu. A knowledge of the linfeathered biped, genus^ homo, jis my etock-ih-Wade..' To such an extent have I carried thi? forty years' study th&i'JL have nevei" made one mistake in my daldxiktiohs during the past thirty years. ..And studying them, I know that each and every One of theiii is reaching for., happiness. Bub 90 pci 1 cent, of them are blind. They aw gropiag wildly Without any real objective. If they found the road they would not know it-"if they bark their shins against obstacles thoy know neither the height nor (the substance of the barrier which baffles thetri. . " ■. " NO LOSSIBEEPABABLB' A justification for 1 unhappiness, and that shtifld be a tempoifary character, is 1" iifreparable loss. And there .is-no such thing .as. irreparable loss. Death. may remove from you the material part of one you love, but the individuality of yoM loved one remains With Vott until you also paßs to sleep, t think of tho36 Who have gone as being in the ne^t roblftj aa are the frieri'ds of rnlhe who itfd in AmeriOa or in South Africa. The fact that they are not within nry r"4nge of vision means nothing. Their individuality is indestructible. To see those yoij, love suffering is the only real cause for unhappiness.. Be-* yond that there is ho cause whatever. I am happy because I am well (touching wood to propitiate the Mumbo-Jum-bo who is 1 more potent in these days than all the priests of all the jhurches!) and my children are well (touch wood again!). I may be broke—l am always broke—l may. have all softs of .disappointments—though a man who lives by his pen should be impervious to disappointment—but I am perfectly happy, for I envy.nobody, I am never sorry for myself, I accept all buffets. of Fortune aB experience, and I never say "It might I»av6 been." . .',\