Look for Happiness

Evening Star, Issue 23325, 22 July 1939, Page 3

Look for Happiness

' Written by MARY SCOTT, for the * Evening Star’

Surdly to-day ire are, most of us, erring upon the side of pessimism? Unhappiness is becoming something of a oult. so that ire feel positively guilty if -we ,flare to enjoy life.' A, man said quite seriously to me this week: “But, what, is'there, to bo happy" about, life is nothing, but if desert, and' only a fool cqulq find any excuse , for happiness.” Now,, it is no pse arguing with people like that; they 'eijjoy, their own misery and are far happier than they realise. • ■‘But all the time, this'pessimist was grpwling awAyi.at me,- there was a quotation at the back- of my mind that U wanted to'htid at him.; I. could not remember seldom can. at the right moment—and,,if Iliad been able to, I should not have cast it before him; for " it was; from Shelley, and I knew perfectly well that he would have said): “ Poetry? Qh, of course, .if you’re going. to start "quoting, itoetry. ’ ’ And from ''thinking, me merely shallow, he wpuld have.decided that I was an imbecile.” .

very good recipe for happiness. Unlike pleasure, happiness is found in giving, not merely in taking. Yon canhot shut it up within yourself; if you attempt to do so it will die of inanition. It is visible, tangible, free to All the. world, a sunny park where the grass is not disfigured by “ No Trespassing ” notices. Everyone, giving of his best, experiences true happiness—the writer, giving his heart and mind; the physician, _ giving skill and experience ; the artist, giving beauty from his eye and soul—all these are happy; happiest, perhaps, of all, is the good and unselfish man who gives himself and his own life. But the law is inexorable—to he happy we must give. ■ It is easy to be happy if one is seldom alone. Pleasure is enjoyed in crowds; but one _must have solitude, even .if only occasionally, to know true happiness. Because to-day we have a little lost, or grown to undervalue, the habit of happiness, we-have substituted for it a great deal of pleasure. Noise, chatter, excitement, high speed, loud talk, incessant laughter these may give transitory pleasure, but they do not stand for happiness. They” arc onlvy symbols for escape from boredom, evasion of thought, refuge from oneself. To be happy, one must be able to live with one’s own mind and find joy in one’s own thoughts. But not always. Happiness is not compatible with continual solitude, for such seclusion stands invariably for selfishness It is possible to grow so addicted to our own society that wo grudge to give out of its store to any man. Tin's is selfishness, a cowardly evasion of possible jars, a refusal to undertake human responsiblities, an escape from reality into the comparative security of one’s own egoism. I have known people who prided themselves on .their passion for solitude ; because they could enjoy their own society, they appeared to be conscious of a vast superiority. They made a practice of repelling all advances lest anyone should) venture to intrude upon their precious ego. Nor were they, in any example, people who through years of isolation and loneliness had lost the habit of human intercourse. They were men living in the world of affairs, going to their business every day. dining in club or restaurant, coming homo to a depressed household at. ivsht. They cultivated the habit of silence from pure meanness and niggardliness; so precious did tbev consider their speech that they would not readily give even

At home, with no one to, quote it to, I found it easily enough: Many a green isle needs must be ; In the deep widle sea of misery; Or lithe "mariner, worn and- wan, • Never could thus voyage on.

Somehow one feels that Shelley did not. quite like admitting to those green isles, but even: his despair could not deny their existence. To-day they are still there—far more of them than our pessimists will allow. Happiness is necessarily elusive: you can neither define it nor tell where it can bo found. I once read a profound truth that impressed! me very much; “Happiness dwells on the borderland where workpasses into play.” That, I imagine, gets as near to its habitat as possible. It -has been said that man is never so much himself as when he is playing; it may. he so, but the converse holds equally good; some, men are never so completely themselves as when they are working. Certainly no one can be ,happy unless he is truly and! utterly himself —not, at least, once he has pkssed the “ pretending ” age, when every one of us can he princes or fairies at will. A few never pass the barrier that lies between this land and that of-harsh reality; and they are the happiest of all, for they alone can command their fates, make their own world and its ioys at pleasure. The nmioritv of us find our jov partly ,in our work and .partlv in our piny; in a judicious mixture of the two lies a

of that. The puzzling part about such an attitude is that it is usually adopted by people so uninteresting that they seem to have no excuse at all for the high valuation they put upon themselves.

But if perpetual solitude, deliberately cultivated and continually indulgedl through life, is nothing hut selfishness, so is this habit of gloom that seems to be settling upon us like some disastrous blight. There are not nearly enough cheerful people about in the world to-day, and never has it needed them more. We h are grown to make a virtue of pessimism instead of regarding it as an unfortunate disease. Happiness, most blessed of gifts,_ has come into disrepute as the sign of lightness. This is surely a mere admission of weakness, a dangerous ranker that can only poison our minds and do harm in the world. If anvone as conscientiously gloomy as Shellev was yet forced to admit the existence of “ many a green isle ” in his deep sea of misery, then more ordinary people, \ike you and me. can. if we will, find a perfect archipelago of them.