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Happiness in Our Work

Children, I am pleading with you to find happiness. All the world is
seeking happiness, but so many are seeking it by rattling down instead
of by shaking up.

The happiness is in going up--in developing a greater arm, a greater
mind, a greater character.

Happiness is the joy of overcoming. It is the delight of an expanding
consciousness. It is the cry of the eagle mounting upward. It is the
proof that we are progressing.

We find happiness in our work, not outside of our work. If we cannot
find happiness in our work, we have the wrong job. Find the work that
fits your talents, and stop watching the clock and planning vacations.

Loving friends used to warn me against "breaking down." They scared me
into "taking care" of myself. And I got to taking such good care of
myself and watching for symptoms that I became a physical wreck.

I saved myself by getting busier. I plunged into work I love. I found
my job in my work, not away from it, and the work refreshed me and
rejuvenated me. Now I do two men's work, and have grown from a skinny,
fretful, nervous wreck into a hearty, happy man. This has been a great
surprise to my friends and a great disappointment to the undertaker. I
am an editor in the daytime and a lecturer at night.

I edit all day and take a vacation lecturing at night. I lecture almost
every day of the year--maybe two or three times some days--and then
take a vacation by editing and writing. Thus every day is jam full of
play and vacation and good times. The year is one round of joy, and I
ought to pay people for the privilege of speaking and writing to them
instead of them paying me!

If I did not like my work, of course, I would be carrying a terrible
burden and would speedily collapse.

You see, I have no time nowadays to break down. I have no time to think
and grunt and worry about my body. And like Paul I am happy to be
"absent from the body and present with the Lord." Thus this old body
behaves just beautifully and wags along like the tail follows the dog
when I forget all about it. The grunter lets the tail wag the dog.

I have never known a case of genuine "overwork." I have never known of
anyone killing himself by working. But I have known of multitudes
killing themselves by taking vacations.

The people who think they are overworking are merely overworrying. This
is one species of selfishness.

To worry is to doubt God.

To work at the th