Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women Part 7

We might soon become like spoiled children, or nerveless drones, or pampered aristocrats. What we are to control is ourselves, our minds.

We must seek Happiness in the right state of mind, in the legitimate labors, duties, and pleasures of life, and then we shall find what we seek; yet we may often find it under very different circ.u.mstances from what we expected. We may look for it in one pursuit and find it in another; and sometimes where we expect the least we shall find the most; and where we look for the most we shall find the least. "The first shall be last and the last first." We are short-sighted, and fail to see the end of things. There is not a little of the misery of life comes from this disposition to have things our own way, as though we could not be happy under any circ.u.mstances only just those we have framed to suit our minds. Circ.u.mstances are not half so essential to our Happiness as most people imagine. A cabin is often the theater of more true Happiness than a palace. The dunghill as often enthrones the true philosophy of life as the seats which kings occupy. Women in humble circ.u.mstances often possess richer minds, sweeter hearts, a n.o.bler and profounder peace than those of magnificent surroundings. The disposition to make the best of life is what we want to make us happy. Those who are so willful and seemingly perverse about their outward circ.u.mstances, are often intensely affected by the merest trifles. A little thing shadows their life for days. The want of some little convenience, some personal gratification, some outward form or ornament, will blight a day's joy.

They can often bear a great calamity better than a small disappointment, because they nerve themselves to meet the former, and yield to the latter without an effort to resist. Mole-hills are magnified into mountains, and in the shadow of these mountains they sit down and weep.

The very things they ought to have sometimes come unasked, and because they are not ready for them, they will not enjoy them, but rather make them the causes of misery. There is a disposition also in such minds to multiply their troubles as well as magnify them. They make troubles of many things which should really be regarded as privileges, opportunities for self-sacrifice, for culture, for improving effort. They make troubles of the ordinary allotments of life, its duties, charities, changes, unavoidable accidents, reverses, and experiences. All this can be considered in no other light than morally wrong, for these common allotments and experiences were beyond all question ordained by Infinite Wisdom as a most healthy discipline for both the body and mind of man.

All such complaining is ingrat.i.tude, practical impiety.

Nearly all people have their secret repinings, their unexpressed disquietude, because things are not as they would have them; because they do not possess some fancied good, or do experience some fancied misfortune. There is a tendency in all our minds to such inward murmurings. And this is wrong, and when we indulge in it, it is wicked.

We ought not to make idols of our plans. We ought not to have too great attachments to our own ideas of what we must have, to be happy. If we do, we shall be very miserable, while we believe we are very good. The trouble is, we are too selfish, too unyielding in our arrangements for life's best good. Because we can not find Happiness in our own way, we will not accept it in any way, and so make ourselves miserable. I have known many very excellent people very unhappy from a kind of stubborn adherence to their settled convictions of just what they must have, how they must live, and what they must do to be happy. They lose sight of the fact that G.o.d rules above them, and a thousand influences work around them, partly, at least, beyond their control. They have not determined to accept life cheerfully in whatever form it may come, and seek for good--the "soul's calm suns.h.i.+ne and heartfelt joy"--under all circ.u.mstances, believing that all things work together for good to those who truly seek a divine life.

He who seeks a divine life and its pleasantness and peace in the right spirit, humble, earnest, loving, and cheerful, full of faith and hope, will realize that all things work together for his good. He may engage in life's duties and pleasures in the fullest confidence of this. Even his trials and disappointments will discipline his mind for n.o.blest joys in store. They will work out good for his soul, which he will bear with him in life, and through the gate of death, as his crown and treasure above.

Thus far in the pursuit of this subject I have not considered Happiness as possible to a cold, selfish, worldly heart. One's aims must be good, or he can not expect inward peace. The Bible promises no peace to the wicked while he remains wicked. I am not authorized to promise any except to the righteous. Our hopes of Happiness for this world and the future must be founded in inward righteousness.

Now it really seems to me that nothing is more wanted among young women than a sound philosophy of life, one that they can live by and be happy in. Their duties and trials are to be great. Their influences are to strike into the hearts of the whole world. The generations to come are to be born of them. It is folly for them to expect to be happy by mere impulse. They must seek the Happiness of principle. They must make Happiness an object, and seek it with the use of all right means.

One consideration more is worthy of a moment's notice. It relates to health, both bodily and spiritual. One essential of health is cheerfulness of spirits. The weaknesses and diseases among females is most fearful. Only here and there is a healthy woman. And we attribute it in part to the great unrest and unspoken melancholy brooding in the great woman-soul of the world. Few, perhaps, fully realize the fearful truth of this remark. Many a beautiful woman is pining under a gloom she seldom expresses, and not more than half understands. Woman's confined life and nerve-distracting habits predispose her to revery, meditation, and morbid habits of mind and feeling. These shade her soul with gloom which slowly but surely sinks the tone of her health and shatters her const.i.tution. Many a young woman plants the seeds of consumption in some early sorrow, and many more sink the tone of their health to a low degree by desponding reveries and half-despairing longings for something they have but half conceived in their own minds, and put forth no efforts to obtain. It is a burning shame to our nation and age that our women are so impotent and sickly. We believe the best medicine for them would be one that would set them all into a hearty laugh, taken once an hour through the day. They need more sprightly activity, more exhilaration of mind and body, more suns.h.i.+ne and bird-song, more exuberant freshness of life and Happiness. Every gloomy thought is a tax on health. Every desponding hour extracts a year's vitality from the system. A melancholy spirit is like a humor in the blood, breeding a perpetual disease. Doubts and fears are like chills and fevers, which shake and shatter the vital economy to its center. No unhappy woman can enjoy perfect health. The most vigorous const.i.tutions will quail and sink under the weight of a desponding mind. Health! what is all the world without it? Who would sacrifice it for every earthly good? Then let young women beware how they tamper with it by giving way to or cheris.h.i.+ng gloomy moods of mind. Seek to be peaceful, cheerful, happy, if you would be well.

Their despondency of mind is equally destructive of spiritual health. It unbalances all the mental powers, gives a morbid activity to some, and a kind of reversed action to others. No gloomy spirit is beautiful or harmonious. We may pity it, but we can not admire it--scarcely love it.

In G.o.d's sight its sadness is an imperfection--in many instances it is sinfulness. The piety of such a mind is of a questionable character, and its virtue is liable to be tinctured with selfishness or other evils.

Its judgment is improved. G.o.d loves a cheerful spirit, a happy soul. It is not only a duty we owe to ourselves, but to G.o.d, to be happy. Our efforts to subdue every desponding tendency in our minds should be as great and as constant as to master our selfish pa.s.sions or animal desires. I fully believe we have the power to be happy if we will, or, at least, the most of us have. Some unfortunate minds are const.i.tutionally down in the mouth. Poor things! They suffer a great hereditary evil. They are too hopeless, from a defect in the structure of their minds; but these are few and far between. The rule is, that we may be happy if we will. None of the common allotments and evils in life are absolute barriers in our way. A resolute will and steady purpose, with a proper time, will overcome all. Then buckle on the armor of life, oh, young woman, and rouse your spirit to its best efforts to lead a cheerful and useful life. Let no misfortune weigh you down, but rise above all, and great will be your reward.