THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19513, 16 February 1926, Page 5

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

LIFE’S WILL-O'-THE-WISP. The people who are constantly trying to define happiness, and consciously to pursue it, lose sight of one baffling but essential truth. Happiness is un-self-conscious if it is the real thing. Once you begin to ask yourself: “Is this happiness?’’ “Is this one of Life’s purple patches?’’ it means that ennui or disillusion are al' ~ady lurking round the corner. Another perfectly abysmal fallacy is to suppose that the only sort of happiness which lights a flame in the heart is spelt with four letters; that Love harbours all the ecstacy and kindles all the glow. It is a great moment when two affinities merge under the same star; but there is a happiness as immortal in the losing of one’s self, not in another human entity, but in work that demands every atom of one’s faculties.

Self-Forgetfulness.

All the time, of course, you arc really pouring Self into the work that holds you in its spell; but in the fact that you are not conscious of it means that you have wested from Life, for that interval of self-forgetfulness, the prize of happiness. It is because Self, with its analytical attitude, takes a ba-k seat in such golden hours of unself-con-scious self-expression that we garner happiness without realising it. It is only in after years, looking back on memory ’s golden sheaves, that we can begin to estimate the wealth they contain. The poet, the novelist, the dramatist, the painter, all the big creative artists in every sphere, will tell you that success never lit the same spiritual heart-glow that was theirs when genius was burning dimly but bravely amidst all manner of setbacks. Self was forgotten in the fulfilment of same function that demanded a divine concentration. This soul-func-tioning, as one may call it, whatever form it may take in the realm of hard work, is happiness. Unrealised, undefined as such, while the work is all in all, it is dreamed of with gladness and gratitude in after days. Looking back, the heart well knows that happiness is the reward of labour that did not seek reward.

Unself-conscious Success.

And if you are no creative artist, but .just an honest-to-goodness. loyal, allout executant, you will find the secret, of happiness always the same. Its fruits are plucked divinely unawares. Happiness and self-consciousness cannot mingle. They dwell on different planes. It is the self-forgetfulness in soul-functioning that feeds the glorious hunger men call the quest eternal—the quest of happiness.