Country Life Interests

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20956, 8 November 1939, Page 5

Country Life Interests

A page devoted to the Interests of the Country Women of the y Waikato, and in particular to advancing and recording the activities of [ those two great national organisations, the Women's Institutes and the \ Women’s Division of the Farmers’ Union. %

LOOKING FOR THE GOOD

RECIPE FOR HAPPINESS Lovers look for the good in each other. The business of love is to idealise. We imagine a thing first and create it afterward. Heaven is really here when we imagine it, and to imagine means to “image” —or see. Looking for the good in others is the surest way of evolving it in ourselves. It isn’t enough to be good—we must be good for something. People who are good for something are happy—but not too happy. Very happy people are smug and self-satisfied. Happiness must always be flavoured with discontent. This prevents stagnation. You can’t get happiness by taking it from someone else. You keep happiness by giving it away. The more you pass out, the more you have. Happiness is a mood of the mind. It is a psychological condition where the outlook on the world is bright, kindly, and good-tempered. When we are happy, we are generous with our friends, lenient toward our enemies—strong, patient, able, courageous, hopeful, looking for the good. Happiness is a positive quality, not a mere absence of something. You reach Nirvana when nothing matters. It is true that nothing matters much, but everything matters a little. Nirvana is passive, happiness is positive, and positive anything is better than negative nothing. Happiness is a state of transition. It means that we are going somewhere, moving toward a place that we think is better than this, stepping from this to that. The happy mood is the creative mood. Happy people plant, plan, build, devise, design, invent. Kill happiness, and industrialism dies and the breadline forms. Happiness is a deep current moving with irresistible force. Joy is a rippling, dancing, singing stream. Joy does not necessarily imply power, but happiness always means life, and life in abundance. Happiness cannot be stored up. It must be utilised in order to keep it. Just as the Israelites of old gathered their manna every day, so must we get our happiness. A smile, a wave of the hand, a word of good cheer, a hand-grasp, a little note of recognition—all these done in happiness bless and benefit other people, and add to the giver’s bank balance. Happiness is contagious. It runs over and inundates everything and everybody in its vicinity. It oozes, leaks—breaks the dam and makes the waste places green. He who has happiness is rich, though he live in a cottage; he who is without happiness is a beggar, though he live in a palace. And the recipe for happiness is: Think the good; look for the good; give out the good. Then all the good we deserve is ours. —ELBERT HUBBARD.