OIL OF HAPPINESS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3813, 25 September 1936, Page 10

OIL OF HAPPINESS

HOW A SMILE COUNTS No, unfortunately, we cannot buy happiness. Instead, we have to manufacture this commodity ourselves. Some people have a good output and constant supply, whilst others never seem to have even a suspicion of it. Life seems so much more pleasant and easier an affair when we have a good supply of the “oil of happiness” ourselves, because we can pass it on to those around us, making life seem brighter for them as well, if they happen to be up against things for a time. I am perfectly convinced that we m,ore or less get what we give in ih is world, and those who go around with a scowl and gloomy look, doing everything as if it were too much trouble, merely make things ten times more difficult for themselves in the end. Most people do not appreciate ill humour, and even if things are not going quite the way you had planned, it is not the otherperson’s fault, so why vent it on them when you feel at war with the world? They probably have troubles of their own to contend with—a thing which rarely strikes your confirmed “grouser.” There are so many situations which, if met with a smile and a look of understanding, can be smoothed over, even if they did seem a bit awkward at first, whereas the same situation met with a grim look and i scowl, will soon become a very different matter altogether. It is a curious fact, but undeniable nevertheless, that few people'will fail to respond to a genuinely friendly smile or sympathetic treatment, and a smile to a lonely being is worth its weight in gold sometimes. Glancing down a list of recent English wills, I could not help noticing one in particular. An elderly lady had died, and left £2OOO to a shop assistant in a certain store, “as a small token of gratitude for her unfailing kindness and helpfulness to me, whenever I visited the store.” That bequest completely proves the truth of my notion that a great many people do very much appreciate sympathy and kindness when it is accorded to them. If that shop assistant had not been a girl of real kindliness, with a sympathetic nature, who did not consider it beneath her to help and advise her elderly customer, she would never have received the bequest, which, probably, ’meant freedom for her in future—from financial worry at least. I am not for a moment suggesting that smiles should be worn auto matically, as a means of securing substantial reward—far from it. In fact, no one would ever be deceived, for a real genuine smile is one of the things which can never be counterfeit. Quite apart from the other side of the question. I firmly believe that it is very bad for us mentally to be continually in contact with gloomy, ill-humoured people, and so strongly do I personally dislike them, that I never go near certain shops and other places where I know I shall find them. Instead I choose the places where I know bright happy smiles will greet me—it makes one feel so different! I am sure we could make each other very much happier if we would only try to “spread a little happiness, as we go by!” '