Part 9

We often hear people wish for childhood or youth again. When any one expresses such a wish, he generally means that he would like to be a child or youth again if he could take back with him all the wisdom and all the powers and capacities that the years have brought him in exchange for his vanished youth. But to be a child again, just such a child as he was, and to grow up all over again, making the same unhappy blunders and suffering from the same hard knocks in the process of adjustment to an inexorable universe--who would wish it? As a matter of fact, if we are really wise, we shall never wish that we might repeat any period of life. Always, just beyond and beckoning to us, is the next period, and we should always believe with Browning that "the best is yet to be." No period of life has or can have a monopoly of happiness.

What, then, is this mysterious thing called happiness, which apparently cannot be taken away from some, yet which others vainly pursue for a lifetime? I have already said that it is something that has to be learned or to be won. It is clear that having everything in the world to make one happy does not always bring happiness, and the reason is that there is no real well-being without consciousness of well-being. If one were heir to vast riches, yet lived and died without knowing of his wealth, it would have been just the same as to have had no wealth. To have youth, health, love, and opportunity, and not to know that one is blest by and through these great gifts, is, perhaps, not greatly different from having none of them. So we see the importance of being fully awake to the blessings we have. You think, for example, that you enjoy and appreciate your home, but if you should learn to-morrow that you had lost it, you would probably discover that you had not received nearly as much happiness from it as you should have. Perhaps you would even recall with remorse that you had sometimes envied the fairer home of some friend, and had allowed yourself to grow quite unhappy over the matter. If those you love best were suddenly to be taken from you, would you then discover how small had been your real appreciation of them? With a deeper appreciation would be found a gratitude constantly translating itself in terms of kindness, patience, and unselfishness. Ask yourself, then, whether you are sure you have derived the happiness that should have been yours from the blessings nearest you.

Have we not learned in part the secret of happiness? _Consciousness of our blessings, deep gratitude for them_, is one of the chief sources of happiness. And do we not see why we grow happier as we grow older? Our losses may be great,--are almost sure to be great,--but how we learn to appreciate what we have left! How trivialities sink into their place and the great things of life loom large! Once the day was overcast because of some fancied slight or neglect, or the weather had upset some cherished plan, or--but why go on with the list? Since then greater troubles have come and a new sense of proportion has been born within us; a consciousness of our great wealth is ever with us. This is one of the secure foundations of happiness.

Do not wait for Experience to teach you these things, for she keeps a dear school. Learn from the experience of others. There is plenty of justifiable sadness in the world, there is plenty of real trouble. Those of us who are not experiencing it owe it to those who are to be cheerful, serene, and strong, that they may lean on us and that we may help carry some of their heavy burdens.

Since it is entirely possible for life to grow happier as it goes on, and since many people find it exactly the reverse, what more can be said by way of pointing out the right path? And when should one seek this path? May one wait until the years of unhappiness come? _One may not wait._ The path may be choked with weeds unless one's feet find it now. As you look forward into the years you have yet to live, what saner question can you ask than how you can find that inward happiness which has for many proved a bulwark against all the buffetings of fate?

It would be hard to over-emphasize the part _work_ plays in making one happy. Idle people are generally unhappy. Look forward, then, to being busy, as long as you live. Find something to do, somewhere, and throw your whole self into your work. It need not be work that is paid for with money, but something to occupy your time and thoughts you must have. You need to feel that by your endeavors you are adding to the world's welfare. Look forward to getting a large share of your happiness in _service_ and you will not be disappointed. Work is a panacea for most of the ills of life. When a great sorrow comes, how shall one endure it unless one has work to do?

Another deep source of happiness is the carrying of responsibility. It is good to develop early in life the habit of solicitude for others. Fortunate are we if there are those who are in some way dependent upon us; it is good for us to deny ourselves for their sake. Happy is the girl who has younger brothers and sisters needing her affectionate and watchful care.

Love must play a large part in every life. In solitude we become narrow, we can never discover ourselves. We need friends and the stimulus of contact with our fellow men. We must give and receive affection. The trouble with most of us is that we think too much about receiving and not enough about giving. Here as everywhere it is more blessed to give than to receive.

For true happiness we need constantly increasing knowledge. An ignorant life can hardly be a happy life. We should be on terms of closest friendship with books. Every one should have some department or field of learning in which he is steadily making conquests, and this in addition to the reading of the best literature. It may be music, or art, or a science, or a language, or some other pursuit to which one turns for recreation and inspiration. In these days good instruction is obtained so easily that intellectual stagnation is inexcusable. Indeed, any one who is really in earnest can make intellectual progress without instruction except that which one gives himself. I knew a busy lawyer who so mastered the subject of botany through self-instruction that he became an able writer and a recognized authority on the subject. Many have mastered a foreign language with the assistance only of books. What a mistake it is to think that with the closing of the school and college days one should cease to be a student! We are never too old to begin the serious study of some subject hitherto unknown to us. Did not Julia Ward Howe begin the study of Greek at an age when most people only doze by the fire?

I have mentioned as important sources of happiness four things--work, responsibility, love, knowledge. It remains to call attention to three kinds, or perhaps three degrees, of happiness. The lowest is merely pleasure or a succession of pleasures. Pleasure depends largely upon what we have, that is, upon external things. It has no deep roots at life's center; yet it is good if we estimate it rightly and recognize that it is not real happiness. Beautiful clothes to wear, good things to eat and drink, a fine house to live in--these things all give pleasure, yet many have found happiness without them. Some have had all of these and yet have led discontented lives. Parties, balls, social pleasures of every sort; travel, money to spend according to one's whims; these have their place. Do they occupy a large place in your life? Well and good; but there is nothing about any of these worthy to be ranked as happiness. You can easily imagine yourself stripped of them all. Would you then be miserable?

Congenial companionship and congenial work come nearer to making real happiness for most of us. Indeed, there are few things upon which the majority of people are so dependent. Yet it would not be difficult to find those who have been deprived of both, and have yet led strong, serene, and useful lives.

You have noticed that the sources of happiness which I have named differ in that while some can be taken away from us, others cannot. It is difficult to conceive of any place or time or circumstances under which we could be deprived of the privilege of loving and serving. Our feeling of obligation and responsibility for others is one that should deepen with years, and from this source we should learn to derive more and more of our happiness. This kind of happiness is very far removed from what we ordinarily think of as pleasure; indeed, it often involves suffering.

"We can only have the highest happiness--such as goes along with being a great man--by having wide thoughts and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings so much pain with it that we can only tell it from pain by its being what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it is good."

This was the happiness of Lincoln, carrying the burdens of his unhappy country on his suffering heart; it was the happiness of the noble army of martyrs of every age; it was the happiness of Christ. He taught us to call it blessedness. As you carefully study His life and character, you will see that He was acquainted with all three kinds of happiness. He despised not pleasure. He was no ascetic, but came eating and drinking. Great must have been the enjoyment in nature of one who could speak as He spake of the lily of the field that outshone the splendor of Solomon, of the humble sparrow unloved of men, but cared for by the good All-Father, of the green blade bursting through the dark soil, of the fields yellowing for the harvest. He enjoyed mingling with His fellow men and knew the joys of friendship. The work which He had been given to do absorbed Him and filled Him with constant joy. If He had not been happy He could not have drawn others to Him as He did, and above all, little children would not have come unto Him. If we sometimes have a different idea of Him, it is because of the closing scenes of His life, after He became a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

Yet it was blessedness that Christ knew best of all. The deeper joys were His; the joy of self-forgetfulness and of self-sacrifice, and the joy of knowing that He was in perfect harmony with His Father's will. Yet who shall say that He was not happy? Would He have exchanged His life of toil and hardship and suffering for any other lot? We know that He never sought another. His secret lies open to the world, for He spoke of it over and over again.

Life does not treat us all alike in the matter of pleasure, and if that were the end and aim of existence this would seem to be a very unjust world. Life does not treat us with entire impartiality even in the matter of happiness. Though most of us are given sufficient material to make life rich and full if we will, yet there are lives that seem to be an exception to this rule. But life treats us all alike in that if pleasure is denied us and we have scant material out of which to build happiness, we may at least attain to blessedness. We may have the joy of self-sacrifice, the privilege of living for others, the glad consciousness of duty nobly done, the power of spiritual growth, the blessedness of knowing that our will is in harmony with God's will. These things the world does not give and it cannot take away.

XIV

AFTER GRADUATION

"There is a past which is gone forever, but there is a future which is still our own." Never before or after is one likely to have such mingled feelings of regret for the vanished past and eagerness for the approaching future as at the close of the school life. Sometimes it is difficult to decide whether the note of sadness or of joy is the dominant one.

As the school days are seen to be rapidly slipping away, the student recognizes, perhaps for the first time, something of their real worth. They have not been wholly free from troubles and disappointments, though some time, by contrast, it will seem that they have been so. Even now, however, you know them to have been days of happy freedom, of glad fellowship, of joyous achievement. Your chief regret in the future will be that you did not quite understand how perfect they were. Now you begin to see what older people mean when they talk of "halcyon days." Not that they were the best days your life will know,--let no one persuade you to that,--but they have a quality all their own that can belong to no other period of life. They will loom larger and larger as they recede into the past, for you will realize more and more fully how much was then begun in you which will go on as long as your soul shall endure.

There are few who can approach the end of school or college life without being made a little serious by the thought that they are moving on. "So our lives glide on," says George Eliot; "the river ends, we don't know where, the sea begins, and then there is no more jumping ashore." Perhaps it has come to you with overwhelming suddenness that the days of preparation for life are over and that the life for which you have been preparing is at hand. You seem always to have been in a safe and sheltered harbor. Now you must push out into the great stream of life, must become your own pilot, must henceforth be responsible for the conduct of the voyage. Are you wise enough for such an undertaking? Who is? Yet an all-wise Creator has ordained that this way lies the only possibility of growth. Responsibility is thrust upon us and we grow able to carry responsibility.

"When Duty whispers, lo! thou must. The youth replies, I can."

The realization of all these sober facts, coming home to the young heart with sudden force, often begets a mood of seriousness and of peculiar responsiveness. It may be that one has not always listened very attentively even to words spoken in deepest earnestness. Life is so full of absorbing interests that it is easy to hear yet hear not. We sometimes forget what an enormous amount of good advice is given to young people and how difficult it would be to follow all of it. Yet I have seldom known a student in whom the combined circumstances of graduation--those to which I have referred and many more--did not produce an earnest and responsive mood, a mood which welcomed sincere and kindly advice. At such a time words of counsel are likely to sink into the heart as seeds into the upturned earth after a rain. Is it for this reason that we call in the wisest and most inspiring speaker we can find to say the very last words to those whom we send forth, conscious, as we always must be, how far short our best efforts have fallen of our high intentions?

There is in the heart of every young person who has any serious thoughts a desire that life may be lived worthily. Who can look forward with any satisfaction to being a drone in the world's busy hive? Who can be content to count only as a cipher? "Each of us," says one of our ex-Presidents, "unless he is contented to be a slumberer on the earth's surface, must do his life-work with his whole heart." Does not this strike a responsive chord in each one of us?

There is a phrase current in these days which began as slang, but which found so useful a place it is not likely to disappear. It is the phrase, "make good." It is oftenest heard in connection with young people after they have left school or college for active life. Their anxious friends inquire, "Will he make good?" "Is she making good?" Unless I am mistaken there is more or less turmoil and anxiety in the minds of most young people--an anxiety seldom admitted to others and not always to themselves, lest they may not "make good." The greater one's longing to be of use, the greater, perhaps, the fear of inability to live up to one's high obligations. How can one be sure of finding the opportunity to render the service one is eager to render? All departments of service seem already crowded; can it be that the world needs more workers? One must be peculiarly endowed with self-confidence who feels no misgivings on this score. Yet timidity never accomplished anything, and belief that we shall succeed is the first essential of success. Though the world presents an apparently solid front to the would-be worker, it is astonishing how quickly it makes a place for one who shows the qualities of perseverance and pluck. There is work for every one who is earnest and willing. Put out of your mind, then, every thought of failure, have faith in yourself and your own powers, and believe that your part in life will be a worthy one.

We must remember, in the first place, that what we are at any given time is only the beginning of our real selves, that is, of our realized selves. The self you seem to be is not you any more than yourself of five years ago was really you. We are constantly changing, never completed. Little do you know the power that may develop within you. To begin somewhere, somehow, doing what your hand or your brain finds to do and doing it enthusiastically and well, is a sure guaranty of that growth which begets larger opportunity.

To discover that opportunity, however, that vantage-point which determines future growth, is, in the case of many young women, not so easy as it seems. Few who are not brought close to the problems of large numbers of young women realize how much more difficult it is for them than it is for their brothers to find, immediately after graduation, conditions which are conducive to earnest, purposeful, and growing lives. Contrast a graduating class of young women with a similar class of young men. Look forward into the next few years and note the differences that are likely to exist in the conditions and circumstances of their lives. In the majority of cases the young man has already chosen his life-work and he hastens eagerly to it. Every stimulus to endeavor is furnished him. The world expects him to give up all else, if necessary, for that chosen work, and it is demanded of him that he succeed. He knows the rich rewards which come to the man who reaches the top of his profession or business. He may go to any part of the earth that will best suit his own purpose. Though he be an only son, or even an only child, he goes, and the world does not disapprove. To give up a promising career that loved ones might not be left lonely would seem, to say the least, quixotic. Has not the young man his own destiny to carve out?

All this is probably right. I am not finding fault with the world's attitude toward its young men. I am not intimating that there is no difference between men and women, or that it is right or desirable that the average young woman should aspire to a "career." I should like, however, to point out some of the obstacles that often lie in the way of her growth. How frequent are the comments upon the apparently aimless and purposeless life of some young woman who once was eager for growth and useful activity! I want to inquire what the world has done to make her life purposeful. Indeed, the probability is that if she has desired to engage in some definite work that she loved and believed worth while, a chorus of voices has gone up in protest.

Not all girls meet the same problems after graduation. In this respect there are to my mind three distinct classes. First, there is the girl who is well satisfied to settle down at home and to whom after a brief period there comes an early and a happy marriage. So far as we are concerned here, her problems are settled, and settled in an eminently satisfactory way. To such a girl one only wants to give the warning that to ensconce one's self snugly in a happy home with one's loved ones and forget the rest of the world is ignoble. There are too many bad homes in the world that need your touch, there are too many homeless people who need your hospitality. While the first and best service you can render is to create an ideal home, yet that home should be shared. One thing which all of us, from the greatest to the least, can do is to work for the betterment of the community in which we live. So long as there are bad laws or unenforced good laws, harmful sanitary conditions, wrong social influences, we should prove our good citizenship by making sacrifices for the public welfare. The woman without a business or profession is in a peculiarly advantageous position for giving the service those with less time at their disposal cannot render.

The second class of girls I have in mind consists of those who do not wish or need to settle down at home with little or nothing to do, but who crave a larger activity. I am not speaking of those who are genuinely needed at home. No girl with right instincts can be so cowardly as to desert in their need--and for her own happiness or supposed welfare--those to whom she owes most. Yet the need for her often seems to exist when it really does not. There is no family that would not be the happier for the presence of an affectionate and helpful daughter in the home. Increase in the family happiness alone, however, is not a sufficient excuse for stifling the desires of an eager and aspiring daughter. The family should make sure that her highest welfare, as well as their own, is being guarded. When the parents decided to give that daughter an education, they took an irrevocable step. Is it strange that now, with all her mental faculties developed and her heart awakened to the needs of humanity, those things which once filled her life can do so no longer? Parents who do not want to see in their daughter the development of new interests and new longings should not educate her.

How often have I heard the plea that the daughter was needed in the home when to the outward observer this need was much less than the daughter's need of opportunity! Those who take it upon themselves to deprive a young woman of that form of growth, or of service which she most desires, should not be forgetful of her future. How many women have I seen who had given up exclusively to their parents the best years of their youth, letting the time slip by when they might have acquired proficiency in some special and satisfying work! Death finally stepped in and removed the objects of their love and the center of their life-interest, leaving them alone, with empty hearts and lives. Look about you and see how many women you can count up who belong to this class. I have often asked myself in such a case what it was the family received from this woman to justify the enormous sacrifice. I sometimes wonder how parents ever dare to run the risk of such a fate for a beloved daughter. The woman who does not marry should have some definite occupation as a permanent source of happiness and growth.

Let us assume, for a moment, that you are one of the many young women who long for some form of service that will exercise all your higher powers and faculties. Let us suppose, further, that you are free from those family responsibilities which would debar you from gratifying that longing. The craving for useful activity is not something to be stifled. It is the result of one of the greatest spiritual laws of life--the law that action, progress, achievement are the essentials of a happy and contented life. The soul wearies of the most beautiful surroundings when deprived of happy activity. One of the supreme joys of life is the joy of doing. To feel all one's powers stretched to the utmost, and to realize that through the exercise of those powers one is making a real contribution to the world's welfare, is the source of the deepest satisfaction the human heart can know. Teas and balls and all the pleasures of social intercourse have their place, but you cannot live on them. They cannot feed the sources of the soul's power.