Article August 10, 1968 Issue

Christian Science and the Single Person

PAULINE CONSTANCE TRESSILIAN

Single persons are often assailed by suggestions of incompleteness, loneliness, or a sense of need. Many single people feel that marriage is essential to their happiness, that they need the support of another's strong or loving qualities to feel complete. Some seek marriage for companionship or social status. Others seek it because they don't know what else to do with their lives.

A man or woman whose friends are all marrying or already married need not feel left out. Human circumstances cannot interfere with happiness, which is essentially spiritual. Nothing can confine joy, love, and fulfillment. They have a spiritual base and are available to all individuality. No single avenue is essential for happiness. In his true being as the perfect, complete spiritual reflection of divine Love, everyone is infinitely loved and loving—now. No one need accept the notion that material conditions can imprison his capacity to feel and impart love.

Our Exemplar, Christ Jesus, told us, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."^{ Matt. 5:48;} Part of Webster's definition of "perfect" reads, "Lacking in no essential detail: complete." Surely Jesus' words mean that a satisfied state of being is natural to us. It is not something to be anxiously sought; it is already established within the true consciousness of each individual.