DESIRE FOR HAPPINESS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 1278, 30 July 1914, Page 4

DESIRE FOR HAPPINESS.

JOYS AT HAND

We all desire happiness. We yearn for it; we strive for it, and we read books about it. And yet it is within the reach of all of us If we would only learn to make much of little. Any child teaches us the secret of happiness in his power of “make believe” in manufacturing sheer happiness out of a few spools on a string, a sandpile, a handful of paper dolls, or six tin soldiers. Think of the sheer happiness that a puppy gets from a flung stick, and the joy of a kitten in a dangled string ! Some of us require diverse and expensive means of making fun. But the really happy woman is she who can find pleasure in watching a plant grow or a bird build its nest, in looking at a sunset, in viewing as much of this great round world as can be seen on ber every day walks, or in listening to the music made by the stumbling fingers of her little daughter learning to play the piano. The trouble is we do not value the little things; we do not place the emphasis on the right thing. We hunger for the big things because in them we think that happiness lies. And when we get them we realise that the biggest things, after all, are the little things, and that the happiness we have chased lies in them. And they are at our hand !