A Joy to Make Others Happy

Excerpt from Attitudes and Habits, Alfred J. Parker

Your good, or higher, nature represents all the wonderful things that can be yours in the present and future because when you live it you train yourself to do all the good things that will inevitably create happiness for yourself and for others. Goodness is a plane of mind whose quality always reproduces goodness to all who live in that plane of mind. Your thoughts and actions create the love and beauty that will always fill your life, for mind is the creative power of your life. It is your life.

So start right now in your own home and among your friends to create kind and happy conditions: share your toys and belongings with others. Do not grab everything away from your playmate to keep it for yourself—this is greediness. Your real joy is in the fact that you have the things that others would like to have. What a fortunate person you are to have what would bring happiness to others by sharing these toys! See the joy in their eyes when they are privileged to share with you. What a joy it is to make others happy. Learn to master these greedy urges and desires; always think about them, what they could lead to and the unhappy conditions they will create. Do nothing to hurt yourself and others. Always be honest in your thinking. Know a thought or desire for what it actually is and do not try to get away with doing foolish things with the excuse that others need not know. Your own mind will surely find you out.

Take upon your shoulders some of the responsibilities in the home because you are a part of that home. Share some of the menial tasks that are a part of your homelife because you are one of the family. Lighten mother’s tasks without waiting to be asked. Be the joy to your parents that they have always expected and desired. Be a fulfilment to your parent’s desires, not a disillusionment.


Thought for the Day

  • The greatest word in all languages is understanding. Learn to think about life: the part we are intended to play in the scheme of things. Learn to value the principle of relationship; i.e., we are all One Life, One Breath, and One God. Therefore, there is good and God in all things. Look always for the good and you will find it along with wisdom. –Alfred J.Parker

  • Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared. –Buddha

  • I cannot stress too deeply the importance of one's constructive mental attitude toward life. One gets out of life only what one puts into it; everything must be seeded in different degrees. Always express happy thoughts and keep an uncomplaining mind. A complaining mind is a destructive one-destructive to health and happiness. How easily we may be made unhappy depends upon the weakness and ignorance of our own minds. Happy thoughts expressed are like the sunbeams that create warmth-that stimulate one's sense of well being and make us feel happy. Give happiness and you will receive it in return: it is a natural phenomenon of a balanced and well-ordered mind. Do not complain; instead seek the solution to the problem, and then you can do something constructive about it. This can best be accomplished by forgetting self; too much false value is placed upon self and personality, thus developing an overrated and inflated ego that sees all things in proportion to its own ignorance. –Alfred J. Parker

  • I would rather be ashes than dust; I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot; I would rather be in a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow than in a sleepy and permanent planet; the proper function of man is to live, not to exist; I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them; I shall USE my time. –Jack London

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