I have been happy in a dentist's
chair, and by far the happiest holiday I ever spent in my life was
under surroundings of discomfort and squalor such as I never before or
since experienced. Those surroundings were certainly not in themselves
productive of happiness; but neither did they detract from it. The
pathos of the situation is that we all desire happiness--it is merely
priggish to pretend that it is otherwise--and that we do not know in
the least how to attain it. Some few people go straight for it and
reach it; some people find it by turning their back upon what they most
desire, and walking in the opposite direction. I had a friend once who
made up his mind that to be happy he must make a fortune. He went
through absurd privations and endured intolerable labours; he did make
a fortune, and retired upon it at an early age, and immediately became
a thoroughly unhappy man, having lost all power of enjoying or
employing his leisure, and finding himself hopelessly and irremediably
bored. Of course, boredom is the surest source of unhappiness, but
boredom is not the result of the things we do or avoid doing, but some
inner weariness of spirit, which imports itself into occupation and
leisure alike, if it is there. There is no nostrum, no receipt for
taking it away. A kindly adviser will say to a bored man, "All this
discontent comes from thinking too much about yourself; if only you
would throw yourself a little into the lives and problems of others, it
would all disappear!" Of course it would! But it is just what the bored
man cannot do; and the advice is just as practical as to say
encouragingly to a man suffering from toothache, "If the pain would
only go away, you would soon be well.
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