| The Secrets of a Beautiful Life |
Chapter 18 |
Page 5 |
Another part of the lesson is that we moderate our desires. “Having food and raiment,” says St. Paul, again, “let us therefore be content.” Very much of our discontent arises from envy of those who seem to be more favoured than ourselves. Many people lose most of the comfort out of their own lot in coveting the finer, more luxurious things some neighbour has. Yet if they knew the whole story of the life they envy for its greater prosperity, they probably would not exchange for it their own lowlier life with its homelier circumstances. Or if they could make the exchange, it is not likely they would find half so much real happiness in the other position as they had enjoyed in their own. Contentment does not dwell so often in palaces as in the homes of the humble. The tall peaks rise higher and are more conspicuous, but the winds smite them more fiercely than they do the quiet vales. And surely the lot in life that God makes for us is always the very best that could be made for us for the time. He knows better than we do what our true needs are. The real cause of our discontent is not in our circumstances; if it were, a change of circumstances might cure it. It is in ourselves, and wherever we go we shall carry it with us. The only cure that will affect anything must be the curing of the fever of discontent in us.
Envious desires for other people’s places which seem finer than our own prevent our getting the best blessings and good out of our own. Trying to grasp the things that are beyond our reach, we leave unseen, unappreciated, untouched, and despised the many sweet bits of happiness that lie close about us. Some one says, “Stretching out his hand to catch the stars, man forgets the flowers at his feet, so beautiful, so fragrant, so multitudinous, and so various.” A fine secret of contentment lies in finding and extracting all the pleasure we can get from the things we have, the common, every-day things, while we enter no mad, vain chase after impossible fancies. In whatever state we are we may therein find enough for our need.
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