Article October 24, 1970 Issue

The Inevitable Result

[For young adults]

JOYCE GRENFELL

Happiness, it seems to me, is the overall word we use to describe awareness of harmonious well–being, the sense of fulfillment or being whole, complete. True happiness has a radiance, is attractive; that is why we all want it.

Sometimes we think that the way to happiness is in sense excitement or having what is popularly termed "a good time." In my experience, this simply doesn't work but results in something illusionary, here one minute and gone the next; and this temporary condition is always outside oneself. It depends on circumstances and is a chancy thing because circumstances vary. But fulfillment, true happiness, like the kingdom of heaven, is found within. It is based on something that can never change and can always be counted on: the spiritual law of man's inseparability from God, the only Mind.

A few years ago I read in The Christian Science Monitor this quotation: "Joy does not happen. . . . It is the inevitable result of certain lines followed and laws obeyed. ..."^{Attributed to Maltbie D. Babcock in Forty Thousand Quotations ed. by Charles N. Douglas, p. 1043 ;}

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