HABIT.

Hokitika Guardian, 12 April 1924, Page 1

HABIT.

AND THE ACHIEVEMENT, OE HAPPINESS.

AIONEY DOES NOT SPELL ENJOYMENT.

(By John Blunt in “Daily Alail”) Very few people, l think, realise to , what an extent their whole life is hound up with habit. People often . bewail or envy the lives of others, but they forget that habit accustoms men . to poverty or wealth to such a degree > that the poor are usually no more tin- , happy than the rich, or the rich any ; more contented than the poor. ; We all know what it is to he racked • with toothache or other violent pain, and to think at such moments, “Oh, ■ if I were only free from this pain, how happy I should lie!” But as a matter of fact, once the pain has gone we do not, after the first relief, feel any new happiness whatsoever. The habit of not being in pain reasserts itself and life seems just the same. A lost of us, too, have envied the luxuries of the rich and planned what wo should do had we illimitable means. But mankind's capacity for pleasure does not expand with his capacity for proemring pleasure, and it is probable than the man who expends 2s Gil on a cigar enjoys his smoke no more than the man who buys 10 cigarettes for Od. Smoking of any kind is. indeed, only a question of habit. A confirmed smoker is intensely miserable if he is forbidden to smoke, but the smoking man is not, in fact, any happier than the man who has never smoked. THE MODE OF EXISTENCE. FortumvLely life is so organised that people, provided they have some security of tenure, can adapt themselves to almost any .surroundings and make their existence bearable alien, to an outsider, it often appears quite unbearable. The aim of everybody is to achieve happiness, either directly or through bringing happiness to others, ami as happiness comes from the. internal min'd not from the external surroundings, it is surprising how much happiness one may discover when one would expert t:i find only misery. Given sufficient to cat, sufficient to wear, and a feeling of reasonable safety habit will enable one to get through life fairly happily under the most unpromising conditions. It is only ignorant people who imagine that the basis of pleasure is the ■’pending of money. The extravagance

of rich people in their search after pleasure is more often the sign of a jadeu appetite than of great powers of enjoyment. They are accustomed to spend money, and therefore they spend it. But the poor who are accustomed to get their pleasures on a .small expenditure, obtain just as much satisfaction. IX EX I PENS IV E PI ,EASUBE. I do not for an instant argue that money cannot unlock the doors to some happiness, hut I do suggest that people ale not capable of more than a certain amount of happiness and that if their parses require them to spend very little money, they can, as a rule, find their quota of happiness in inexpensive 1 leasures.

.Money has no power to bring contentment. That has been said very often: "hat has not been said so often is that contentment is a habit. Even the most afflicted people, such as blind people or people suffering from incurable diseses, are often contented t lid happy, just because they have accustomed their minds to their condition and are resolved to live in what is left to them, not in what has gone from them. WEALTH AND DISCONTENT. Conversely, discontent and dissatlslaetion may go with great wealth just as readily as with great poverty. These .-ve mental characteristics, and depend largely on the power of attuning the miml to its surroundings. And most people instinctively have that power to a greater or less degree, because tlicv instinctively want to find happiness and equilibrium. It. is when they begin to regard money as the sole criterion of happiness that they begin to lose their foothold.