happen- ings of life. A generally optimistic mental attitude is a great blessing, and a poor man with such an attitude will find more pleasure in this life than a rich pessimist. We all know the man who is soured on the world, whose disposition is to sneer at pretty much everything, cynical, critical, satirical, with little faith in his fellow men, suspicious of selfish reasons behind noble deeds, always seeing the unpleasant side. He can be famously rich and yet commands neither our envy nor our respect.
And then we know the man who tries to get the most out of things, who looks first for the sunny side, who loves nature and his fellow man, who is charitable and generous, giving everybody and everything the benefit of the doubt. He may be poor, but we re- spect and often envy him. Occasionally the two men we have de- scribed go to the theatre — not together. One has a box, the other is in the balcony. But a cheerful mental attitude from a bal- cony seat is worth far more than a pessimis- tic attitude from a box. ONE MAN'S ATTITUDE Some men find entertainment in almost everything. I know a man who goes to the world's fairs to see the people.
He admitted it to me. “But," I remonstrated, “ don't you enjoy the exhibits from the different countries?” “Not enough to hike up and down most of the aisles," he answered. “Of course, I take a general look around. But it's the people that entertain, instruct and amuse me most.” “Yes,” I went on," but you live in a city of half a million people. Why don't you enjoy them at home?” "I do,” he declared,“ but at the fairs you see them from all over, all kinds, doing all sorts of things. Let me tell you a few stories showing you just what I mean,"he rambled on, enjoying the telling of the stories almost as much as he did the original episodes themselves. I asked him what his philosophy was, and he answered with a smile, “ Finding pleasant things. I figure it out this way:
We de- vote most all of our time to seeing, hearing, and doing. Now when I'm seeing anything, I don't see it with my eyes alone, but I see it with my sense of enjoyment. When I hear something, I don't hear it with my ears alone, I hear it with my sense of enjoyment. When I do something, I don't do it with my hands alone, but I do it with a sense of enjoyment. Now that may not mean much to you, but it means a whole lot to me. In fact, I believe that stopping to get enjoyment out of things as they come along has probably cost me something. By that I mean, I might have taken the time and will employed in enjoyment, diverted them into money-getting and added to my bank ac- count. But if you think I regret the cost, which is only a possible cost, anyway, you're very badly mistaken. "Now I wasn't born with a sense of en- joyment. In fact, I was an unpleasant little codger in school, and I started work a good deal of a grouch. You'll laugh when I tell you what put me on the right track.
The episode was so small in itself that it makes me laugh to think of it. “One day I happened into one of these Greek shoe-shining parlours. There were a dozen men seated about the wall. Presently a working-man came in with his little boy who was about five years old. The boy watched his father climb into a chair, and the father, seeing how dirty the boy's shoes were, motioned him into another chair. The working-man was evidently quite poor, and the boy's clothes testified to the fact that he was unaccustomed to luxuries. Except for what his mother had done, I don't sup- pose that boy had ever experienced a service done for him. Well, when a Greek knelt down over his shoes and began to brush them, an expression came over the boy's face I will never forget. It was the es- sence of joy.
His eyes sparkled, a smile played about his mouth, and I've never seen a picture, nature, oil or moving, that gave me the pleasure this one did. I looked about the room. Nine of the twelve men were looking at the boy, because he happened to be the last one who took a chair. There wasn't an expression of pleasure, sympathy, amusement, interest, or entertainment, on one of those faces. I was indignant. This lit- tle episode was so human, so amusing, so appealing, that I was fairly mad at the men who looked but couldn't understand. And then my anger turned into pity. I was really sorry for anyone who couldn't enjoy the expression in that boy's face. Even his father didn't take notice.
I waited until the little fellow climbed down, and watched him go into the street, where he paused a moment to look down with a mingled ex- pression of joy and pride, until his father turned and whistled for him. “I had my lesson. That boy lived, not existed, the five minutes he had those shoes polished. It showed me what little things can afford joy, and then I thought of the dozen men, especially the nine who were so hardened that joy seemed to have gone out of their lives. I gave thanks that I wasn't as bad as that yet, and I resolved, then and there, to cultivate the habit of finding joy in what I heard and what I saw and what I did. That's my philosophy. Of course, I also find enjoyment in my other senses, but as I said before, we spend most of our lives see- ing, hearing, doing. Let me warn you that you can't cultivate the sense of enjoyment all at once. It takes time, but you get enough .
إرسال تعليق