Editorial April 26, 1947 Issue

Happiness and Selfishness Never Mix

Paul Stark Seeley

The common thief which steals happiness from many of us is selfishness. This thief is not alone that sense of selfishness which is merely niggardly, inconsiderate, or self willed. It is the sense of selfishness which inheres in the belief that one's selfhood is a material personality; that one's life is in organic matter; that one's existence is largely concerned with the responsibilities of looking after one's own and others' personalities, and is ever subject to a multitude of limitations, uncertainties, and troubles which breed unhappiness and discontent. In other words, the thief which would rob us of our God-given happiness is the selfishness that is native to the mistaken material concept of man.

Some unhappy people are kind, generous, and considerate. They are unhappy because they consent to believe that they are mortal personalities loaded down with problems that concern themselves or others, pack horses for a varied assortment of human troubles, and that their lot affords them little if any happiness; so they try to bear it with a smile.

The recipe for real happiness is thus stated by Mary Baker Eddy (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p.337) : "For true happiness, man must harmonize with his Principle, divine Love; the Son must be in accord with the Father, in conformity with Christ." If you or I have periods of unhappiness, they are the times when we permit our thought to be out of harmony with the Principle which we live to express, the times when we lose sight of our living accord with the Father, when our thoughts are not in conformity with the Christ-idea of being. If our thought is right, happiness is present; if our thought is wrong, happiness is absent.

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