26 Apr The Secret Of Happiness | Inspirational Podcasts
Podcast Transcript: Welcome to the Inspirational Living podcast, brought to you in part by Book of Zen, makers of inspirational fashion and gift ideas. Today’s podcast has been edited and adapted from The Wonders of Life by Ida Luella Rettinghouse Lyon, published in 1866.
Life holds for everyone some different meaning. Out of its great storehouse of treasures, every person endeavors to secure that which, for them, means happiness.
Many people early give up the struggle to acquire more than they find necessary for a mere existence, and never penetrate far into the mysterious labyrinths of this wonderful storehouse. Others waste their energies in accumulating a variety of tawdry trappings, which in no way represent happiness, but whose glittering spectacle blinds them to the less glaring things of real worth.
Some have access to secret chambers, where power and riches wait for those who hold the key. Some are beaten down and perish miserably, in the senseless struggle to secure some coveted object that is not worth the effort. Others die in an attempt to gain something of inestimable value. But their efforts attract the attention of others to that which they were striving for. And, where they failed, their followers succeed.
Those individuals who died have thus not labored in vain. For though they did not live to drag from their hiding-places the treasures which they sought, they knew of their existence and gave them to the world. So often we are laying up treasures, not for ourselves, but for those who come after us. If we only labored for ourselves (in the fragment of eternity which our lives represent), there would be little incentive for effort.
We most fully live when we are most fully conscious that we are an ever-changing expression of universal power — that we are necessary factors in this great universe and can no more separate ourselves from it than the number two can cease to become a factor of any even number.
In working for posterity, we are working for ourselves. In bringing forth hidden treasures to beautify and enrich the world, we are making it a happier dwelling-place for everyone. And we, as an indestructible element in nature, shall “reap as we have sown,” and share with posterity the fruits of our efforts. For we all are linked together by bonds which, though invisible, are as strong as they are mysterious, and enduring as eternity.
Oh, the wonders of life’s storehouse. What myriads of passages remain unexplored”¦. What dungeons imprisoning terrible secrets that were better never unearthed”¦. What steep and forbidding stairways which the faint-hearted never climb, but which repay the patient explorer who ascends them, by leading them to chambers filled with the rarest treasures.
It is a grand privilege to share in life’s rich possessions; to receive the invitation, “Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” “Seek and ye shall find.” Why, then, with all this wealth at our command, are we so ill-supplied with the mental and material possessions which it is our right and privilege to claim?
The answer is easily given. We do not know how to use the powers in our possession, or, knowing them, do not apply the knowledge. The world is awakening to the reality of these hidden powers, but it is still rubbing its eyes and wondering if it is not a dream after all.
We are slowly realizing that the material world is a visible expression of the mental world in which we really live, and in which our greatest powers of achievement lie. We cannot attract happiness by going about with downcast looks and aching hearts, hugging our griefs and dwelling upon them from a mistaken sense of duty…..
Read The Entire Essay in Evergreen: 50 Inspirational Life Lessons
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