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"Never despair. But if you do, work on in despair."

"Hence the secret of happiness is -- something to do; some congenial work. Take away the occupation of all men, and what a wretched world it would be! Half of it would commit suicide in less than ten days."

(John Burroughs--full essay below :)

The Secret of Happiness
by John Burroughs

About the pursuit of happiness, how often I say to myself, that considering life as a whole, the most one ought to expect is a kind of negative happiness, a neutral state, the absence of acute or positive unhappiness. Neutral tints make up the great background of nature, and why not of life? Neutral tints wear best in anything. How much even in the best books is of a negative or neutral character, -- a background upon which the positive beauty is projected. A kind of tranquil, wholesome indifference, with now and then a dash of positive joy, is the best of the common lot. To be consciously and positively happy all the while, -- how vain to expect it! We cannot walk through life on mountain peaks. Both laughter and tears we know, but a safe remove from both is the average felicity.

Another thought which often occurs to me is that we each have a certain capacity for happiness or unhappiness which is pretty constant. We are like lakes or ponds which have their level, and which as a rule are not permanently raised or lowered. As things go in the world, each of us has about all the happiness he has the capacity for. We cannot be permanently set up or cast down. A healthful nature, in the vicissitudes of experience, is not made permanently unhappy, nor, on the other hand, is its water level permanently raised. Deplete us and we fill up; flood us and we quickly run down. We think that if a certain event were to come to pass, if some rare good fortune should befall us, our stock of happiness would be permanently increased, but the chances are that it would not; after a time we should settle back to the old everyday level. We should get used to the new conditions, the new prosperity, and find life wearing essentially the same tints as before. Our pond is fed from hidden springs; happiness is from within, and outward circumstances have but little power over it. The poor man thinks how happy he would be with the possessions of his rich neighbor, but it is one of the commonplace sayings of the preacher that he would not be. Wealth would not change his nature. His wants, his longings, would still run on as before. It would be high water with him for a season, but it could not last.

I have been told that, as a rule, the millionaires are the unhappiest of men. Restless, suspicious, sated, ennuied, they are like a sick man who can find no position in which he can rest. Our real and necessary wants are so few and so easily met, -- food, clothes, shelter! If a little money will bring us such comfort, what will not riches do? So we multiply our possessions many fold, hoping thereby to multiply our happiness. But it does not work, or works inversely. Do you suppose the millionaire's little girl has any more pleasure with her hundred-dollar doll than your washerwoman's child has with her rag baby? And what would not the millionaire himself give if he could eat his rich dinner with the relish the day laborer has in eating his!

The great depresser and destroyer of happiness is death; but from this blow, too, a healthful nature recovers. The broken and crushed plant rises again. The scar remains, but in the tissue runs the same old blood.