Evening star., 1943-12-21
DorothyDi
Says

Are you happy? Are you having
any fun? Are you getting a kick
out of life? Of course, if you are
one of those who, as the homely
old phrase used to go, enjoy poor
health" or whose favorite topic of
conversation is telling their troubles,
or who take pride in never getting
over" any misfortune, you are SIM
ply reveling in bliss. You live in a
melancholy jag and are as drunk
on your own tears as you ever could
be on vintage wine. You are an
object of envy rather than COM
miseration. These words are not for
you.
But there are millions of other
men and women who get no pleasure
out of their miseries. They want to
laugh, not cry. They don't want to
spend their days wandering in the
valley of despond. They want to
dance in night clubs. They don't
want to live dull, drab monotonous
lives with no pep in them. They
want to 60 singing down the high
road.
Yet most of these people who so
long for happiness without ever
finding it have no real reason for
their unhappiness. They have met
with no catastrophe misfortunes,
no heartbreaking disappointments.
They are no victims of poverty and
want. They have comfortable homes
and husbands and wives and chill
dren that are reasonably satisfac-
tory. They should be happy, and
yet they are not. And that is the
greatest tragedy in the world be-
cause it is the commonest.
Now, being a trouble hunter is a.
peculiarly feminine diversion. Of
course, there are men who engage
in this sport, but they are few.
Most men are too busy wrestling
with the problem of how to make
living to have time to search for
the crumpled rose leaf under their
forty mattresses of ease. They don't
probe into their emotions. They
just take it for granted that they
are happy and let it go at that.
But it is the curse of domestic
wonderland they form the bulk of
the unhappy-that their work occu-
pies their hands, but not their
brains; and while they are fixing
the babys bottle, or sweeping the
floors, or darning Tommy's stock
ings, they have leisure to dwell on
how fiat and colorless and uninter-
esting their lives are, and how they
are bored with them
What these housekeeping women,
who are so dissatisfied with their lot
in life, fail to realize is that they
are like bad cooks who, having been
given all the material for making
an angels food cake, turn out a
soggy, tasteless mess that would sour
on anybody's stomach. For, little
as they think it, happiness is a dish
we cook up in our own kitchens, and
we have to make our own thrills
according to our own true and tried
recipes.
Take housekeeping, for example.
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exciting career woman can follow,
or it can be peonage. A woman
can feel that she is queen in her
own house, where she rules as an
absolute monarch; or that she is a
prisoner in it, doomed to a life
sentence at hard labor.
And raising children. Women who
resent the job are bored and frus-
trated and unhappy because they do
not realize that they have in their
hands and are throwing away the
greatest chance of happiness that a
woman ever has, because there is
no love so unquestoning as that of
little child, no drama so exciting
as watching its mind develop, no
humor so funny as its quaint COM
ments on the world, and no ambi-
ton so fully gratified as that of the
mother who looks upon her success
full children who are taking their
part in the worlds work.
And husbands. There would be
very few unhappy marriages if
wives were determined to make
them happy and would dwell upon
their husbands good points instead
of magnifying their defects. For
a husband is as his wife sees him
and all is well, or i'll, according to
whether she looks at him through
her -colored glasses or her blue
spectacles.