hope of return.
Does that sound like sheer, impractical, visionary idealism? It isn't. It is just horse sense.
It is a good way for you and me to find the happiness we long for. I know. I have seen it
happen right in my own family. My own mother and father gave for the joy of helping
others. We were poor-always overwhelmed by debts. Yet, poor as we were, my father
and mother always managed to send money every year to an orphans' home-the
Christian Home in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Mother and Father never visited that home.
Probably no one thanked them for their gifts-except by letter-but they were richly
repaid, for they had the joy of helping little children-without wishing for or expecting
any gratitude in return.
After I left home, I would always send Father and Mother a cheque at Christmas and
urge them to indulge in a few luxuries for themselves. But they rarely did. When I came
home a few days before Christmas, Father would tell me of the coal and groceries they
had bought for some "widder woman" in town who had a lot of children and no money to
buy food and fuel. What joy they got out of these gifts-the joy of giving without
accepting anything whatever in return!
I believe my father would almost have qualified for Aristotle's description of the ideal
man-the man most worthy of being happy. "The ideal man," said Aristotle, "takes joy in
doing favours for others; but he feels ashamed to have others do favours for him. For it
is a mark of superiority to confer a kindness; but it is a mark of inferiority to receive it."
Here is the second point I am trying to make in this chapter: If we want to find
happiness, let's stop thinking about gratitude or ingratitude and give for the inner joy of
giving.
Parents have been tearing their hair about the ingratitude of children for ten thousand
years. Even Shakespeare's King Lear cried out: "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
to have a thankless child!"
But why should children be thankful-unless we train them to be? Ingratitude is naturallike
weeds. Gratitude is like a rose. It has to be fed and watered and cultivated and
loved and protected.
If our children are ungrateful, who is to blame? Maybe we are. If we have never taught
them to express gratitude to others, how can we expect them to be grateful to us?
I know a man in Chicago who has cause to complain of the ingratitude of his stepsons.
He slaved in a box factory, seldom earning more than forty dollars a week. He married a
widow, and she persuaded him to borrow money and send her two grown sons to
college. Out of his salary of forty dollars a week, he had to pay for food, rent, fuel,
clothes, and also for the payments on his notes. He did this for four years, working like
a coolie, and never complaining.
Did he get any thanks? No; his wife took it all for granted-and so did her sons. They
never imagined that they owed their stepfather anything-not even thanks!
Who was to blame? The boys? Yes; but the mother was even more to blame. She thought
it was a shame to burden their young lives with "a sense of obligation". She didn't want
her sons to "start out under debt". So she never dreamed of saying: "What a prince your
stepfather is to help you through college!" Instead, she took the attitude: "Oh, that's the
least he can do."
She thought she was sparing her sons, but in reality, she was sending them out into life
with the dangerous idea that the world owed them a living. And it was a dangerous
idea-for one of those sons tried to "borrow" from an employer, and ended up in jail!
We must remember that our children are very much what we make them. For example,
my mother's sister-Viola Alexander, of 144 West Minnehala Parkway, Minneapolis -is a
shining example of a woman who has never had cause to complain about the
"ingratitude" of children. When I was a boy, Aunt Viola took her own mother into her
home to love and take care of; and she did the same thing for her husband's mother. I
can still close my eyes and see those two old ladies sitting before the fire in Aunt Viola's
farmhouse. Were they any "trouble" to Aunt Viola? Oh, often, I suppose. But you would
never have guessed it from her attitude. She loved those old ladies-so she pampered
them, and spoiled them, and made them feel at home. In addition, Aunt Viola had six
children of her own; but it never occurred to her that she was doing anything especially
noble, or deserved any halos for taking these old ladies into her home. To her, it was
the natural thing, the right thing, the thing she wanted to do.
Where is Aunt Viola today? Well, she has now been a widow for twenty-odd years, and
she has five grown-up children-five separate households-all clamouring to share her,
and to have her come and live in their homes! Her children adore her; they never get
enough of her. Out of "gratitude"? Nonsense! It is love-sheer love. Those children
breathed in warmth and radiant human-kindness all during their childhoods. Is it any
wonder that, now that the situation is reversed, they give back love?
So let us remember that to raise grateful children, we have to be grateful. Let us
remember "little pitchers have big ears"-and watch what we say. To illustrate-the next
time we are tempted to belittle someone's kindness in the presence of our children, let's
stop. Let's never say: "Look at these dishcloths Cousin Sue sent for Christmas. She knit
them herself. They didn't cost her a cent!" The remark may seem trivial to us-but the
children are listening. So, instead, we had better say: "Look at the hours Cousin Sue
spent making these for Christmas! Isn't she nice? Let's write her a thank-you note right
now." And our children may unconsciously absorb the habit of praise and appreciation.
To avoid resentment and worry over ingratitude, here is Rule 3:
A. Instead of worrying about ingratitude, let's expect it. Let's remember that Jesus
healed ten lepers in one day-and only one thanked Him. Why should we expect more
gratitude than Jesus got?
B. Let's remember that the only way to find happiness is not to expect gratitude, but to
give for the joy of giving.
C. Let's remember that gratitude is a "cultivated" trait; so if we want our children to be
grateful, we must train them to be grateful.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 15 - Would You Take A Million Dollars For What You Have?
I have known Harold Abbott for years. He lives at 820 South Madison Avenue, Webb City,
Missouri. He used to be my lecture manager. One day he and I met in Kansas City and he
drove me down to my farm at Belton, Missouri. During that drive, I asked him how he
kept from worrying; and he told me an inspiring story that I shall never forget.
"I used to worry a lot," he said, "but one spring day in 1934, I was walking down West
Dougherty Street in Webb City when I saw a sight that banished all my worries. It all
happened in ten seconds, but during those ten seconds I learned more about how to live
than I had learned in the previous ten years. For two years I had been running a grocery
store in Webb City," Harold Abbott said, as he told me the story. "I had not only lost all
my savings, but I had incurred debts that took me seven years to pay back. My grocery
store had been closed the previous Saturday; and now I was going to the Merchants and
Miners Bank to borrow money so I could go to Kansas City to look for a job.
I walked like a beaten man. I had lost all my fight and faith. Then suddenly I saw coming
down the street a man who had no legs. He was sitting on a little wooden platform
equipped with wheels from roller skates. He propelled himself along the street with a
block of wood in each hand. I met him just after he had crossed the street and was
starting to lift himself up a few inches over the kerb to the sidewalk. As he tilted his
little wooden platform to an angle, his eyes met mine. He greeted me with a grand
smile. 'Good morning, sir. It is a fine morning, isn't it?' he said with spirit. As I stood
looking at him, I realised how rich I was. I had two legs. I could walk. I felt ashamed of
my self-pity. I said to myself if he can be happy, cheerful, and confident without legs, I
certainly can with legs. I could already feel my chest lifting. I had intended to ask the
Merchants and Miners Bank for only one hundred dollars. But now I had courage to ask
for two hundred. I had intended to say that I wanted to go to Kansas City to try to get a
job. But now I announced confidently that I wanted to go to Kansas City to get a job. I
got the loan; and I got the job.
"I now have the following words pasted on my bathroom mirror, and I read them every
morning as I shave:
I had the blues because I had no shoes,
Until upon the street, I met a man who had no feet."
I once asked Eddie Rickenbacker what was the biggest lesson he had learned from
drifting about with his companions in life rafts for twenty-one days, hopelessly lost in
the Pacific. "The biggest lesson I learned from that experience," he said, "was that if you
have all the fresh water you want to drink and all the food you want to eat, you ought
never to complain about anything."
Time ran an article about a sergeant who had been wounded on Guadalcanal. Hit in the
throat by a shell fragment, this sergeant had had seven blood transfusions. Writing a
note to his doctor, he asked: "Will I live?" The doctor replied: "Yes." He wrote another
note, asking: "Will I be able to talk?" Again the answer was yes. He then wrote another
note, saying: "Then what in hell am I worrying about?"
Why don't you stop right now and ask yourself: "What in the hell am I worrying about?"
You will probably find that it is comparatively unimportant and insignificant.
About ninety per cent of the things in our lives are right and about ten per cent are
wrong. If we want to be happy, all we have to do is to concentrate on the ninety per
cent that are right and ignore the ten per cent that are wrong. If we want to be worried
and bitter and have stomach ulcers, all we have to do is to concentrate on the ten per
cent that are wrong and ignore the ninety per cent that are glorious.
The words "Think and Thank" are inscribed in many of the Cromwellian churches of
England. These words ought to be inscribed in our hearts, too: "Think and Thank". Think
of all we have to be grateful for, and thank God for all our boons and bounties.
Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels, was the most devastating pessimist in
English literature. He was so sorry that he had been born that he wore black and fasted
on his birthdays; yet, in his despair, this supreme pessimist of English literature praised
the great health-giving powers of cheerfulness and happiness. "The best doctors in the
world," he declared, "are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman."
You and I may have the services of "Doctor Merryman" free every hour of the day by
keeping our attention fixed on all the incredible riches we possess-riches exceeding by
far the fabled treasures of Ali Baba. Would you sell both your eyes for a billion dollars?
What would you take for your two legs? Your hands? Your hearing? Your children? Your
family? Add up your assets, and you will find that you won't sell what you have for all
the gold ever amassed by the Rockefellers, the Fords and the Morgans combined.
But do we appreciate all this? Ah, no. As Schopenhauer said: "We seldom think of what
we have but always of what we lack." Yes, the tendency to "seldom think of what we
have but always of what we lack" is the greatest tragedy on earth. It has probably
caused more misery than all the wars and diseases in history.
It caused John Palmer to turn "from a regular guy into an old grouch", and almost
wrecked his home. I know because he told me so.
Mr. Palmer lives at 30 19th Avenue, Paterson, New Jersey. "Shortly after I returned from
the Army," he said, "I started in business for myself. I worked hard day and night. Things
were going nicely. Then trouble started. I couldn't get parts and materials. I was afraid I
would have to give up my business. I worried so much that I changed from a regular guy
into an old grouch. I became so sour and cross that-well, I didn't know it then; but I now
realise that I came very near to losing my happy home. Then one day a young, disabled
veteran who works for me said: 'Johnny, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You take
on as if you were the only person in the world with troubles. Suppose you do have to
shut up shop for a while-so what? You can start up again when things get normal. You've
got a lot to be thankful for. Yet you are always growling. Boy, how I wish I were in your
shoes I Look at me. I've got only one arm, and half of my face is shot away, and yet I am
not complaining. If you don't stop your growling and grumbling, you will lose not only
your business, but also your health, your home, and your friends!'
"Those remarks stopped me dead in my tracks. They made me realise how well off I was.
I resolved then and there that I would change and be my old self again-and I did."
A friend of mine, Lucile Blake, had to tremble on the edge of tragedy before she
learned to be happy about what she had instead of worrying over what she lacked.
I met Lucile years ago, when we were both studying short-story writing in the Columbia
University School of Journalism. Nine years ago, she got the shock of her life. She was
living then in Tucson, Arizonia. She had-well, here is the story as she told it to me:
"I had been living in a whirl: studying the organ at the University of Arizona, conducting
a speech clinic in town, and teaching a class in musical appreciation at the Desert
Willow Ranch, where I was staying. I was going in for parties, dances, horseback rides
under the stars. One morning I collapsed. My heart! 'You will have to lie in bed for a
year of complete rest,' the doctor said. He didn't encourage me to believe I would ever
be strong again.
"In bed for a year! To be an invalid-perhaps to die! I was terror-stricken! Why did all this
have to happen to me? What had I done to deserve it? I wept and wailed. I was bitter
and rebellious. But I did go to bed as the doctor advised. A neighbour of mine, Mr.
Rudolf, an artist, said to me: 'You think now that spending a year in bed will be a
tragedy. But it won't be. You will have time to think and get acquainted with yourself.
You will make more spiritual growth in these next few months than you have made
during all your previous life.' I became calmer, and tried to develop a new sense of
values.
I read books of inspiration. One day I heard a radio commentator say: 'You can express
only what is in your own consciousness.' I had heard words like these many times before,
but now they reached down inside me and took root. I resolved to think only the
thoughts I wanted to live by: thoughts of joy, happiness, health. I forced myself each
morning, as soon as I awoke, to go over all the things I had to be grateful for. No pain. A
lovely young daughter. My eyesight. My hearing. Lovely music on the radio. Time to
read. Good food. Good friends. I was so cheerful and had so many visitors that the
doctor put up a sign saying that only one visitor at a time would be allowed in my cabinand
only at certain hours.
"Nine years have passed since then, and I now lead a full, active life. I am deeply
grateful now for that year I spent in bed. It was the most valuable and the happiest year
I spent in Arizona. The habit I formed then of counting my blessings each morning still
remains with me. It is one of my most precious possessions. I am ashamed to realise that
I never really learned to live until I feared I was going to die."
My dear Lucile Blake, you may not realise it, but you learned the same lesson that Dr.
Samuel Johnson learned two hundred years ago. "The habit of looking on the best side of
every event," said Dr. Johnson, "is worth more than a thousand pounds a year."
Those words were uttered, mind you, not by a professional optimist, but by a man who
had known anxiety, rags, and hunger for twenty years-and finally became one of the
most eminent writers of his generation and the most celebrated conversationalist of all
time.
Logan Pearsall Smith packed a lot of wisdom into a few words when he said: "There are
two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it.
Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second."
Would you like to know how to make even dishwashing at the kitchen sink a thrilling
experience? If so, read an inspiring book of incredible courage by Borghild Dahl. It is
called I Wanted to See.
This book was written by a woman who was practically blind for half a century. "I had
only one eye," she writes, "and it was so covered with dense scars that I had to do all my
seeing through one small opening in the left of the eye. I could see a book only by
holding it up close to my face and by straining my one eye as hard as I could to the left."
But she refused to be pitied, refused to be considered "different". As a child, she
wanted to play hopscotch with other children, but she couldn't see the markings. So
after the other children had gone home, she got down on the ground and crawled along
with her eyes near to the marks. She memorised every bit of the ground where she and
her friends played and soon became an expert at running games. She did her reading at
home, holding a book of large print so close to her eyes that her eyelashes brushed the
pages. She earned two college degrees: an A B. from the University of Minnesota and a
Master of Arts from Columbia University.
She started teaching in the tiny village of Twin Valley, Minnesota, and rose until she
became professor of journalism and literature at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South
Dakota. She taught there for thirteen years, lecturing before women's clubs and giving
radio talks about books and authors. "In the back of my mind," she writes, "there had
always lurked a fear of total blindness. In order to overcome this, I had adopted a
cheerful, almost hilarious, attitude towards life."
Then in 1943, when she was fifty-two years old, a miracle happened: an operation at
the famous Mayo Clinic. She could now see forty times as well as she had ever been able
to see before.
A new and exciting world of loveliness opened before her. She now found it thrilling
even to wash dishes in the kitchen sink. "I begin to play with the white fluffy suds in the
dish-pan," she writes. "I dip my hands into them and I pick up a ball of tiny soap
bubbles. I hold them up against the light, and in each of them I can see the brilliant
colours of a miniature rainbow."
As she looked through the window above the kitchen sink, she saw "the flapping greyblack
wings of the sparrows flying through the thick, falling snow."
She found such ecstasy looking at the soap bubbles and sparrows that she closed her
book with these words: " 'Dear Lord,' I whisper, 'Our Father in Heaven, I thank Thee. I
thank Thee.' "
Imagine thanking God because you can wash dishes and see rainbows in bubbles and
sparrows flying through the snow 1
You and I ought to be ashamed of ourselves. All the days of our years we have been
living in a fairyland of beauty, but we have been too blind to see, too satiated to enjoy.
If we want to stop worrying and start living. Rule 4 is:
Count your blessings-not your troubles!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 16 -Find Yourself And Be Yourself: Remember There Is No One Else on Earth
Like You
I have a letter from Mrs. Edith Allred, of Mount Airy, North Carolina: "As a child, I was
extremely sensitive and shy," she says in her letter. "I was always overweight and my
cheeks made me look even fatter than I was. I had an old-fashioned mother who thought
it was foolish to make clothes look pretty. She always said: 'Wide will wear while narrow
will tear'; and she dressed me accordingly. I never went to parties; never had any fun;
and when I went to school, I never joined the other children in outside activities, not
even athletics. I was morbidly shy. I felt I was 'different' from everybody else, and
entirely undesirable.
"When I grew up, I married a man who was several years my senior. But I didn't change.
My in-laws were a poised and self-confident family. They were everything I should have
been but simply was not. I tried my best to be like them, but I couldn't. Every attempt
they made to draw me out of myself only drove me further into my shell. I became
nervous and irritable. I avoided all friends. I got so bad I even dreaded the sound of the
doorbell ringing! I was a failure. I knew it; and I was afraid my husband would find it
out. So, whenever we were in public, I tried to be gay, and overacted my part. I knew I
overacted; and I would be miserable for days afterwards. At last I became so unhappy
that I could see no point in prolonging my existence. I began to think of suicide."
What happened to change this unhappy woman's life? Just a chance remark!
"A chance remark," Mrs. Allred continued, "transformed my whole life. My mother-in-law
was talking one day of how she brought her children up, and she said: 'No matter what
happened, I always insisted on their being themselves.' ... 'On being themselves.' ...
That remark is what did it! In a flash, I realised I had brought all this misery on myself
by trying to fit myself into a pattern to which I did not conform.
"I changed overnight! I started being myself. I tried to make a study of my own
personality. Tried to find out what I was. I studied my strong points. I learned all I could
about colours and styles, and dressed in a way that I felt was becoming to me. I reached
out to make friends. I joined an organisation-a small one at first-and was petrified with
fright when they put me on a programme. But each time I spoke, I gained a little
courage. It took a long while-but today I have more happiness than I ever dreamed
possible. In rearing my own children, I have always taught them the lesson I had to learn
from such bitter experience: No matter what happens, always be yourself!"
This problem of being willing to be yourself is "as old as history," says Dr. James Gordon
Gilkey, "and as universal as human life." This problem of being unwilling to be yourself is
the hidden spring behind many neuroses and psychoses and complexes. Angelo Patri has
written thirteen books and thousands of syndicated newspaper articles on the subject of
child training, and he says: "Nobody is so miserable as he who longs to be somebody and
something other than the person he is in body and mind."
This craving to be something you are not is especially rampant in Hollywood. Sam Wood,
one of Hollywood's best-known directors, says the greatest headache he has with
aspiring young actors is exactly this problem: to make them be themselves. They all
want to be second-rate Lana Turners, or third-rate Clark Gables. "The public has already
had that flavour," Sam Wood keeps telling them; "now it wants something else."
Before he started directing such pictures as Good-bye, Mr. Chips and For Whom the Bell
Tolls, Sam Wood spent years in the real-estate business, developing sales personalities.
He declares that the same principles apply in the business world as in the world of
moving pictures. You won't get anywhere playing the ape. You can't be a parrot.
"Experience has taught me," says Sam Wood, "that it is safest to drop, as quickly as
possible, people who pretend to be what they aren't."
I recently asked Paul Boynton, employment director for the Socony-Vacuum Oil
Company, what is the biggest mistake people make in applying for jobs. He ought to
know: he has interviewed more than sixty thousand job seekers; and he has written a
book entitled 6 Ways to Get a Job. He replied: "The biggest mistake people make in
applying for jobs is in not being themselves. Instead of taking their hair down and being
completely frank, they often try to give you the answers they think you want." But it
doesn't work, because nobody wants a phony. Nobody ever wants a counterfeit coin.
A certain daughter of a street-car conductor had to learn that lesson the hard way. She
longed to be a singer. But her face was her misfortune. She had a large mouth and
protruding buck teeth. When she first sang in public-in a New Jersey night-club-she tried
to pull down her upper Up to cover her teeth. She tried to act "glamorous". The result?
She made herself ridiculous. She was headed for failure.
However, there was a man in this night-club who heard the girl sing and thought she had
talent. "See here," he said bluntly, "I've been watching your performance and I know
what it is you're trying to hide. You're ashamed of your teeth." The girl was
embarrassed, but the man continued: "What of it? Is there any particular crime in having
buck teeth? Don't try to hide them! Open your mouth, and the audience will love you
when they see you're not ashamed. Besides," he said shrewdly, "those teeth you're trying
to hide may make your fortune!"
Cass Daley took his advice and forgot about her teeth. From that time on, she thought
only about her audience. She opened her mouth wide and sang with such gusto and
enjoyment that she became a top star in movies and radio. Other comedians are now
trying to copy her!
