Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous
cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully,
and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such
conduct does not make you soon feel cheerful, nothing else on that
occasion can. So to feel brave, act as if we _were_ brave, use all our
will to that end, and a courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of
fear. Again, in order to feel kindly toward a person to whom we have
been inimical, the only way is more or less deliberately to smile, to
make sympathetic inquiries, and to force ourselves to say genial things.
One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of
heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental
demon of uncharitable feeling. To wrestle with a bad feeling only pins
our attention on it, and keeps it still fastened in the mind; whereas,
if we act as if from some better feeling, the old bad feeling soon folds
its tent like an Arab, and silently steals away.
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