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79 pages

English

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Who among us couldn't use more joy in our lives? In The Joyful Heart, author Robert Haven Schauffler reminds us that being happy -- or being unhappy -- is a choice that each of us has the ability to make. He dispenses practical tips and hints to help readers bring more happiness, contentment, and fulfillment into their lives.

Sujets

Spirit

Body

Mind

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 mai 2009
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781775410430
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0164€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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THE JOYFUL HEART
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ROBERT HAVEN SCHAUFFLER

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The Joyful Heart From a 1914 edition.
ISBN 978-1-775410-43-0
© 2009 THE FLOATING PRESS.
While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike.
Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Foreword I - A Defense of Joy II - The Brimming Cup III - Enthusiasm IV - A Chapter of Enthusiasms V - The Auto-Comrade VI - Vim and Vision VII - Printed Joy VIII - The Joyful Heart for Poets IX - The Joyous Mission of Mechanical Music X - Masters by Proxy

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"People who are nobly happy constitute the power, the beauty and the foundation of the state."
— JEAN FINOT: The Science of Happiness.
TOMY WIFE
Foreword
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This is a guide-book to joy. It is for the use of the sad, the bored,the tired, anxious, disheartened and disappointed. It is for the useof all those whose cup of vitality is not brimming over.
The world has not yet seen enough of joy. It bears the reputation ofan elusive sprite with finger always at lip bidding farewell. Incertain dark periods, especially in times of international warfare, itthreatens to vanish altogether from the earth. It is then the firstduty of all peaceful folk to find and hold fast to joy, keeping it intrust for their embattled brothers.
Even if this were not their duty as citizens of the world, it would betheir duty as patriots. For Jean Finot is right in declaring that"people who are nobly happy constitute the power, the beauty and thefoundation of the state."
This book is a manual of enthusiasm—the power which drives theworld—and of those kinds of exuberance (physical, mental andspiritual) which can make every moment of every life worth living. Itaims to show how to get the most joy not only from traveling hopefullytoward one's goal, but also from the goal itself on arrival there. Iturges sound business methods in conducting that supreme business, theinvestment of one's vitality.
It would show how one may find happiness all alone with his betterself, his 'Auto-Comrade'—an accomplishment well-nigh lost in thiscrowded age. It would show how the gospel of exuberance, by offeringthe joys of hitherto unsuspected power to the artist and his audience,bids fair to lift the arts again to the lofty level of the Pericleanage. It would show the so-called "common" man or woman how to developthat creative sympathy which may make him a 'master by proxy,' andthus let him know the conscious happiness of playing an essential partin the creation of works of genius. In short, the book tries to showhow the cup of joy may not only be kept full for one's personal use,but may also be made hospitably to brim over for others.
To the Atlantic Monthly thanks are due for permission to reprintchapters I, III and IV; to the North American Review , for chapterVIII; and to the Century , for chapters V, VI, IX and X.
R. H. S.
GEEENBUSH, MASS.
August, 1914.
I - A Defense of Joy
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Joy is such stuff as the hinges of Heaven's doors are made of. So ourfathers believed. So we supposed in childhood. Since then it hasbecome the literary fashion to oppose this idea. The writers wouldhave us think of joy not as a supernal hinge, but as a pottle of hay,hung by a crafty creator before humanity's asinine nose. The donkey isthus constantly incited to unrewarded efforts. And when he arrives atthe journey's end he is either defrauded of the hay outright, or hedislikes it, or it disagrees with him.
Robert Louis Stevenson warns us that "to travel hopefully is a betterthing than to arrive," beautifully portraying the emptiness andillusory character of achievement. And, of those who have attained,Mr. E. F. Benson exclaims, "God help them!" These sayings are typicalof a widespread literary fashion. Now to slander Mistress Joy to-dayis a serious matter. For we are coming to realize that she is a farmore important person than we had supposed; that she is, in fact, oneof the chief managers of life. Instead of doing a modest littlebusiness in an obscure suburb, she has offices that embrace the wholefirst floor of humanity's city hall.
Of course I do not doubt that our writer-friends note down the truthas they see it. But they see it imperfectly. They merely have a cornerof one eye on a corner of the truth. Therefore they tell untruths thatare the falser for being so charmingly and neatly expressed. What theysay about joy being the bribe that achievement offers us to get itselfrealized may be true in a sense. But they are wrong in speaking of thebribe as if it were an apple rotten at the core, or a bag ofcounterfeit coin, or a wisp of artificial hay. It is none of thesethings. It is sweet and genuine and well worth the necessary effort,once we are in a position to appreciate it at anything like its trueworth. We must learn not to trust the beautiful writers tooimplicitly. For there is no more treacherous guide than the consummateartist on the wrong track.
Those who decry the joy of achievement are like tyros at skating whoventure alone upon thin ice, fall down, fall in, and insist on the wayhome that winter sports have been grossly overestimated. This outcryabout men being unable to enjoy what they have attained is ahalf-truth which cannot skate two consecutive strokes in the rightdirection without the support of its better half. And its better halfis the fact that one may enjoy achievement hugely, provided only hewill get himself into proper condition.
Of course I am not for one moment denying that achievement is harderto enjoy than the hope of achievement. Undoubtedly the former lacksthe glamour of the indistinct, "that sweet bloom of all that is faraway." But our celebrated writer-friends overlook the fact thatglamour and "sweet bloom" are so much pepsin to help weak stomachsdigest strong joy. If you would have the best possible time of it inthe world, develop your joy-digesting apparatus to the point where itcan, without a qualm, dispose of that tough morsel, the present,obvious and attained. There will always be enough of the unachieved attable to furnish balanced rations.
"God help the attainers!"—forsooth! Why, the ideas which I havequoted, if they were carried to logical lengths, would make heaven afarcical kill-joy, a weary, stale, flat, unprofitable morgue ofdisappointed hopes, with Ennui for janitor. I admit that the oldheaven of the Semitic poets was constructed somewhat along theselines. But that was no real heaven. The real heaven is a quiet,harpless, beautiful place where every one is a heaven-born creatorand is engaged—not caring in the least for food or sleep—in turningout, one after another, the greatest of masterpieces, and enjoyingthem to the quick, both while they are being done and when they arequite achieved.
I would not, however, fall into the opposite error and disparage thejoy of traveling hopefully. It is doubtless easy to amuse one's selfin a wayside air-castle of an hundred suites, equipped withself-starting servants, a Congressional Library, a National Gallery ofpictures, a Vatican-ful of sculpture, with Hoppe for billiard-marker,Paderewski to keep things going in the music-room, Wright as grandhereditary master of the hangar, and Miss Annette Kellerman in chargeof the swimming-pool. I am not denying that such a castle is easier toenjoy before the air has been squeezed out of it by the horny clutchof reality, which moves it to the journey's end and sets it down witha jar in its fifty-foot lot, complete with seven rooms and bath, andonly half an hour from the depot. But this is not for one momentadmitting the contention of the lords of literature that theair-castle has a monopoly of joy, while the seven rooms and bath havea monopoly of disillusionized boredom and anguish of mind. If yourbefore-mentioned apparatus is only in working order, you can have noend of joy out of the cottage. And any morning before breakfast youcan build another, and vastly superior, air-castle on the vacant landbehind the woodshed.
"What is all this," I heard the reader ask, "about a joy-digestingapparatus?"
It consists of four parts. Physical exuberance is the first. To aconsiderable extent joy depends on an overplus of health. The joy ofartistic creation, for instance, lies not so intensely andintoxicatingly in what you may some time accomplish as in what hasactually just started into life under your pencil or clayey thumb,your bow or brush. For what you are about to receive, the Lord, as arule, makes you duly thankful. But with the thankfulness is alwaysmingled the shadowy apprehension that your powers may fail you whennext you wish to use them. Thus the joy of anticipatory creation isakin to pain. It holds no such pure bliss as actual creation. When youare in full swing, what you have just finished (unless you areexhausted) seems to you nearly always the best piece of work that youhave ever done. For your critical, inhibitory apparatus is temporarilyparalyzed by the intoxication of the moment. What makes so manyartists fail at these times to enjoy a maximum of pleasure and aminimum of its opposite, is that they do not train their bodies "likea strong man to run a race," and make and keep them aboundingly vital.The actual toil takes so much of their meager vitality that they havetoo little left with which to enjoy the resulting achievement. If theybecome ever so slightly intoxicated over the work, they have adreadful morning after, whose pain they read back into the joypreceding. And then they groan out that all is vanity, and slander joyby calling it a pottle of hay.
It takes so much vitality to enjoy achievemen