Our hearts must be free from self-seeking, from regret, from anger,
from restlessness. The vision comes not always to the connoisseur,
comes to him whose life is simple, earnest, open-eyed and openhearted.
In the pauses of his faithful work he will refresh his soul with some
bit of beauty that tells of attainment, of peace, of perfection. That
is a proof to him of the beauty in the midst of which he lives,
inexhaustible, hardly discerned; it carries him beyond itself into
the ideal world of which it is a sample and illustration; unconsciously
during the duties of the day he lives in the light of that vision,
and everything is sweetened and blessed thereby.
Can we maintain a steady under glow of happiness?
Happiness--happiness sufficient to make life well worth living is,
for most men at least, at most times, a real possibility. To be won
it has but to be sought vigorously enough. It is to be sought,
however, not primarily by changing one's environment but by
changing one's self; not by acquiring new things, but by acquiring
a new attitude toward things; not by getting what could make one
happy, but by learning to be happy with what one can get. THE
KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS WITHIN YOU! This is not merely a
moralist's theory, or an empirical observation; it is a scientific fact.
We may restate the matter in psychological language by saying
that happiness and unhappiness are responses of the organism
to its environment, reactions upon a stimulus, our attitude of
welcome or dissatisfaction toward the various matters of our
experience.
Pages:
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373