I've been reading one of my dad's books, "The Majesty of Calmness". Happiness in this day and time seems an elusive emotion. Many people say or think, what is there to be happy about? The country is broke. We're under attack by terrorists. My house foreclosed. I can't make ends meet. I can't figure out what to do with my life. I'm unemployed and can't find a job. On and on, the media tells us repeatedly how bad things are. But would you necessarily be happer if you had wealth, fame, honors, power, influence and prosperty? Prince Bismarck, one of the greatest statesmen of the nineteenth century said, even though he had all those things and held an empire in his fingers, he had not one day of happiness!
Here are some excerpts from the book.
"Happiness is the greatest paradox in Nature. It can grow in any soil, live under any conditions. It defies environment. It comes from within; it is the revelation of the depths of the inner life as light and heat proclaim the sun from which they radiate. Happiness consists not of having, but of being; not of possessing, but of enjoying. It is the warm glow of a heart at peace with itself. Man is the creator of his own happiness; it is the aroma of a life lived in harmony with high ideals. For what a man has, he may be dependent on others; what he is, rests with him alone. What he obtains in life is but acquisition; what he attains is growth. Happiness is the soul's joy in the possession of the intangible. Absolute, perfect, continuous happiness in life is impossible for the human. It would mean the consummation of attainments, the individual consciousness of a perfectly fulfilled destiny. Happiness is paradoxical because it may coexist with trial, sorrow and poverty. It is the gladness of the heart, rising superior to all conditions.
Man is the only animal that can be really happy. To the rest of the creation belong only weak imitations of the understudies. Happiness represents a peaceful attunement of a life with a standard of living. It can never be made by the individual, by himself, for himself. It is one of the incidental by-products of an unselfish life. No man can make his own happiness the one object of his life and attain it, any more than he can jump on the bull's eye of happiness on the target of life, aim above it. Place other things higher than your own happiness and it will surely come to you. You can buy pleasure, you can acquire content, you can become satisfied, but Nature never put real happiness on the bargain counter. It is the undetachable accompaniment of true living. It is calm and peaceful; it never lives in an atmosphere of worry or of hopeless struggle.
The basis of happiness is the love of something outside self. Love of parent for child; love of man and woman; love of humanity in some form, or a great lifework into which the individual throws all his energies.
Happiness is the voice of optimism of faith, of simple, steadfast love. No cynic or pessimist can be really happy. A cynic is a man who is morally near-sighted, and brgs about it. He sees the evil in his own heart and thinks he sees the world. He lets a mote in his own eye eclipse the sun. The keynote of Bismarck's lack of happiness was his profound distrust of human nature.
There is a royal road to happiness; it lies in consecration, concentration, conquest and conscience.
Consecration is dedicating the individual life to the service of others, to some noble mission, to realizing some unselfish ideal. Consecration places the object of life above the mere acquisition of money as a finality. The man who is unselfish, kind, loving, tender, helpful, ready to lighten the burden of those around him, to forget himself sometimes in remembering others, is on the right road to happiness.
Concentration makes life simplier and deeper, cutting away the shams and pretenses of modern living and limits life to its truest essentials. Worry, fear, useless regret, all the great wastes that sap mental, moral or physical energy must be sacrified or the individual needlessly destroys half the possibilities of living. Concentration dignifies a humble life. It leads to right for right's sake, without thought of policy or of reward. It brings calm and rest to the individual, a serenity that is but the sunlight of happiness.
Conquest is the overcoming of an evil habit, the rising superior to opposition and attack, the spiritual exaltation that comes from resisting the invation of the groveling material side of life. When it seems that justice is a dream; that honesty and loyalty and trugh count for nothing, when hope grows dim and flickers, that is the time when you must tower in the great sublime faith that right must prevail; you must master yourself to master the world around you. This is conquest and it is what counts. Even a log can float with the stream; it takes a man to fight sturdily against an opposing tide that would sweep his craft out of its course.
Conscience, as the mentor, the guide and compass of every act, leads ever to happiness. The individual must be careful that he is not appealing to a conscience perverted or deadened by the wrongdoing and subsequent deafness of its owner. The man who is honestly seeking to live his life in consecration, concentration and conquest, living from day to day as best he can, by the light he has, may rely explicitly on his conscience. He can shut his ears to "what the world says" and find in the approval of his own conscience the highest earthly tribune, and voice of the Infinite communing with the individual.
Unhappiness is the hunger to get; happiness is the hunger to give. Happiness comes not because we seek to absorb it, but because we seek to radiate it.
[Excerpts from The Majesty of Calmness" by William George Jordan]
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