Part 5

To help all those with whom you live, and many beyond this narrow circle, keep happy.

To help your children and posterity, whether you already are or are going to be a father or mother, keep happy.

The relation of a parent (or of any one who has charge of children) to children, illustrates well how our states of mind react upon ourselves. Be happy with children, and you make them happier, healthier, pleasanter to be with, easier to train. When they are in this favourable condition, you yourself, in turn, have more Happiness and health, partly because your work is more delightful and more successful. And so your Happiness is self-increasing as well as self-radiating.

C. D. Larson, from whose book I have already quoted, says, in another book:--

“Make it a point to be happy, just as you make it a point to be clean, to be presentable, to be properly dressed, to work well, to be efficient. Make the attainment of continuous happiness and greater happiness a permanent part of your strongest ambition.”

Real Happiness is a power within oneself, not dependent on circumstances; at least not dependent when it has become a habit. He who has Happiness is like a magic plant that bears beautiful and shade-giving and health-giving leaves, beautiful and sweet-smelling flowers, beautiful and refreshing and cleansing fruit, wherever it is, and without the aid of special soil, air, light, warmth, and rain. For it has, as it were, its own subtle, ethereal, and eternal soil and air and light and warmth and rain within itself.

Therefore, keep happy.

The Gospel of Happiness--the word “Gospel” once meant “good news,” but now has lost much of its gladdening vitality--is, when we examine deeply and widely, “perspectively” and prospectively, sound Philosophy and sound Religion. To the devout Hindu, God is not only “Wisdom, Love, Might,” but also Bliss. Sat Chit Ananda meant Lasting Reality, True Knowledge, and Blissful Happiness. A Perfect God--and this applies whether we believe in a Personal Being or not, for an Impersonal Being cannot easily be imagined as sad!--cannot surely be sad; and we are told to become perfect as God is Perfect.

We are often recommended to fill the mind with healthy, invigorating, purifying thoughts. This, again, is a New Testament Commandment. The words in the ordinary rendering of Philippians, iv. 8, do not bring out the vitality and force and verve of the Greek words, but they give the general idea:--

“Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think of these things.”

It is a Commandment to attend to--to fill the mind by repetition with--eternally true ideas, ideas that command respect, ideas that are right, ideas that are clean and pure, ideas that are welcome and sweet; ideas that have words of good omen, ideas of manliness and womanliness, ideas of praise and appreciation.

Therefore, think of Happiness: keep happy.

In keeping happy, we obey the frequently reiterated Commandment to “Rejoice,” and, without any special attention to the negative and prohibitive Commandments not to worry, and not to be angry, and not to be unkind, and not to criticise unkindly, and so forth, we, ipso facto, obey these Commandments as well, just as the person who is encouraged and inspired does not need to be comforted in so-called “misfortune.”

Therefore, keep happy.

Happiness helps you. “It is profitable in every way to learn to be glad.”

Happiness helps yourself and others, and hurts none.

“No selfish heart can really be glad.”

Happiness is the right thing to keep. Happiness is our duty, and is “good form.”

Happiness increases itself.

“The more things you are glad for, the more things you will have to be glad for. Gladness is a magnet. Because you were glad, even when there was nothing to make you glad, you proved that you deserved everything that has the power to make you glad. And that which we truly deserve must come to remain as our own. Possess gladness, and you will soon possess those things that produce gladness.”

But how?

How to Keep Happy

It is so easy to say to others, or to ourselves, Keep happy. But how keep happy?

Here are a few out of many helps.

People will ask, “What about trying circumstances? How can we keep happy under, or in them, whether they be past or present or future?”

I was much struck by a phrase in a little book I read some time ago. It described how someone, who was going to an unpleasant interview, was told:--“Go to the man, taking God with you.” A good piece of general advice is to welcome the circumstances as one would welcome either a strong opponent or a severe handicap at a game--namely, as a privilege and an occasion for bringing out (as a great player said) “one’s best game.” I think a “handicap” is an excellent description. For what true sportsman resents a handicap?

Turn the Mind to Blessings,

or think of your own blessings, not only in the past, but also in the present. Think of all the conveniences of civilisation. Then, if you like, contrast the hardships of primitive times--with no books, no travelling facilities, no sanitation!