Happiness and Marriage | Page 8

But the pangs you suffer
today have their roots in yesterday or day before, or the year before that.
Cause and effect trip close upon each other's heels--so close that the
careless or ignorant observer misses the trip. He exaggerates the effect
if it be an unhappy one, and goes nosing for a bigger cause than the real
one. How could his little slip of this morning, or yesterday, be the cause
of this terrible evil which has befallen him?--and he slides completely
over the real cause. And keeps on repeating it.
Self-righteousness, by blinding your eyes to the truth, is the direct
cause of the most gigantic and the most subtle miseries of the world.
These awfully good people who fully realize how hard they have
always tried to do right, are the unhappiest people in the world--unless
I except Tom, Dick, Harry and Fan, the victims of these self-righteous
reformers. No, I can't even except these; for they at least generally
succeed in having their own way in spite of the would-be reformer. But
what so utterly disheartening as continued lack of success? And the
self-righteous one never succeeds. It is hard, hard, to be so wise and
willing, with such high ideals (the self-righteous one in» strong on
ideals), and never to succeed in making Tom, Dick and Harry conform
to them. Do you see why Jesus said so often, "Woe comes to the
Pharisee" --the self-righteous? And why he called them hypocrites? Of
course they are unconscious of their hypocrisy--self-righteousness
blinds them to the truth; they think others are to blame for most of the
self-righteous one's own hard conditions.
The self-righteous one is doomed to a tread-mill of petty failures. He
goes round and round his own little personal point of view and learns
nothing.

It is by getting at the other fellow's point of view that we learn
things--about him and ourselves, too. When the self-righteous one
wakes up to the fact that the world is full of people whose points of
view are just exactly as right and wise and ideal as his own; and begins
to feel with, and PULL WITH these other people, instead of against
them; when he does this he will find himself out of the treadmill to stay.
As he shows a disposition to consider other people's ideals and help
others in the line they want to go, he will find the whole world eager to
help him in the way he wants to go. The self-righteous one works alone
and meets defeat. The one who, recognizing his own righteousness in
intent, yet forgets not that others are even as he, is the true friend and
be-friended, of all the world.
Now don't let this homily slip off your shoulders. We are all
self-righteous in spots, and none of us is so very wise that he cannot by
self-examination and readjustment learn a lot more.
Each soul in its place is wisest and best. Don't you try to get into the
pilot house and steer things for Tom, Dick, or Harry. Stay in your own
and steer clear of the rocks of anger, malice, revenge, resentment,
re-sistance, INTERFERENCE and immoderation.
CHAPTER V.
SO NEAR AND YET SO FAR.
"Help me to make things go forward instead of backward. I want to be
neat and attractive, with a good head of hair, a good complexion and
good health. I want to help my husband so he will fall in love with me
to make home beautiful, attractive and comfortable. I want bright eyes
and freedom from that careworn look. Oh, I want to draw my husband
nearer to me." (From a Taurus woman, aged twenty-seven.)
Isn't that pitiful? And heaven knows--or ought to--how many poor
women, and men, too, live with that same dumb longing to get nearer
and be chums with somebody. That cry touches my heart, for I lived
years in the same state.

And, oh, how I struggled to draw others nearer to me. How I agonized
and cried and prayed over it. How I worked to make home attractive.
How I cooked and washed and scrubbed, sewed and patched and
darned to please! How I quickly brushed my hair and hustled into a
clean dress so as to be neat and ready when my husband came in! And
how I ached and despaired inwardly because he frowned and found
fault! How I studied books of advice to young wives! How their advice
failed! How I tried and TRIED to get him to confide in me and make a
chum of me! And how the more I tried the more he had business
downtown! Oh, the growing despair of it all! And the growing illnesses,
too! Oh, the gulf that widened and widened between us! Oh, the
loneliness!