I say
again that what we need and profit by is experience, and sometimes
that comes by suffering, helpless, dreary, apparently meaningless
suffering. Yet when pain subsides, do we ever, does any one ever
wish the suffering had not befallen us? I think not. We feel
better, stronger, more pure, more serene for it. Sometimes we get
experience by living what seems to be an uncongenial life. One
cannot solve the problem of happiness by simply trying to turn out
of one's life whatever is uncongenial. Life cannot be made into an
Earthly Paradise, and it injures one's soul even to try. What we
can turn out of our lives are the unfruitful, wasteful,
conventional things; and one can follow what seems the true life,
though one may mistake even that sometimes. One of the commonest
mistakes nowadays is that so many people are haunted with a vague
sense that they ought to DO GOOD, as they say. The best that most
people can do is to perform their work and their obvious duties
well and conscientiously.
If we realise that experience is what we need, and not necessarily
happiness or contentment, the whole value of life is altered. We
see then that we can get as much or even more out of the futile
hour when we are held back from our chosen delightful work, even
out of the dreary or terrified hour, when the sense of some
irrevocable neglect, some base surrender that has marred our life,
sinks burning into the soul, as a hot ember sinks smoking into a
carpet.
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