Whatever the quality of your enjoyment or happiness may be, you have
patterned it by your life motive by the spirit in which you have
worked, by the principles which have actuated you.

A pretty different harvest, I grant, many of us must face, marred with
all sorts of hideous, poisonous weeds, but they are all the legitimate
product of our sowing. No one can rob us of our harvest or change it
very much. Every thought, every act, every motive, whether secret or
public, is a seed which no power on earth can prevent going to its
harvest of beauty or ugliness, honor or shame. Most people have an
idea that happiness is something that can be manufactured. They do not
realize that it can no more be manufactured than wheat or corn can be
manufactured. It must be grown, and the harvest will be like the seed.

You, young man, make up your mind at the very outset of your career
that whatever comes to you in life, that whether you succeed or fail,
whether you have this or that, there is one thing you will have, and
that is a happy, contented mind, that you will extract your happiness
as you go along. You will not take the chances of picking up or
developing the happy habit after you get rich, for then you may be too
old.

Most people postpone their enjoyment until they are disappointed to
find the power of enjoyment has largely gone by and that even if they
had the means they could not get anything like as much real happiness
out of it as they could have gotten as they went along when they were
younger. Take no chances with your happiness, or the sort of a life
that can produce it; whatever else you risk, do not risk this. Early
form the happy habit, the habit of enjoyment every day, no matter what
comes or does not come to you during the day. Pick crumbs of comfort
out of your situation, no matter how unpleasant or disagreeable.

I know a man who, although poor, can manage to get more comfort out of
a real tough, discouraging situation than any one else I have ever
seen. I have often seen him when he did not have a dollar to his name,
with a wife to support; yet he was always buoyant, happy, cheerful,
consented. He would even make fun out of an embarrassing situation,
see something ludicrous in his extreme poverty.

There have never been such conflicting estimates, such varying ideas,
regarding any state of human condition as to what constitutes
happiness. Many people think that it is purchasable with money, bu