The Secret of Success

mistake. No one’s sincerity can become a safeguard against the consequences of his errors. How to Find Happiness? “Happiness is not a station you arrive at but a manner of travelling.” This very perceptive remark, made by Margaret Lee Runbeck, is worth turning over in the mind, for so many of us think of happiness as a destination which we must reach sooner or later, provided that we just make sufficient efforts to do so. Yet consistent effort to produce happiness so often ends in failure. We think if we acquire enough wealth, heap up possessions, dress stylishly, have a large circle of friends, make interesting trips and so on and so forth, we shall necessarily be happy, but more often than one might imagine, all this is accompanied by a feeling of unease, of inadequacy, even of despair. It is because we have made the mistake of thinking of happiness as the sum of a series of different types of pleasures and, as such, something to be set up as a goal and striven towards. But the more we hurl ourselves at this objective, the further it seems to recede from our grasp. There is also the view that happiness can be attained by avoidance of difficulties, responsibilities and unpleasantness of all kinds. But this negative approach yields no better results than a frantic scrabbling after pleasures. The strangest aspect of this problem is that it is mostly people who never think of their own happiness who achieve the most enviable state of contentment. These others who find that happiness has come to them quite unexpectedly are those who have made up their minds to do without happiness, and to devote themselves to worthwhile tasks without expecting any particular reward. Often such activities yield great happiness without that ever having been their objective. Happiness is indeed an extremely elusive mental state. Let us suppose that we seem fated never to be happy, because perhaps we are forced to live in conditions