Luky
I THINK THE ONLY WAY TO ATTAIN A REASONABLE STATE OF HAPPINESS IN THIS VALLEY OF TEARS IS TO BE CONTENTED WITH ONE'S LOT.
You may not be the most beautiful, famous, wealthy or accomplished person in the world.
You may not be regarded with any degree of awe by those who live around you.
But if you love your husband, your children, the dog, the cat, your home and your furniture, the sun will shine for you every day.
I always find great contentment in my lot, and that annoys the moaning Minnies of my acquaintances.
"Don't be so sanctimonious", they say. "It turns us off."
What I feel like replying, but don't, is simply:"Well, if I had a jaundiced outlook like yours, I wouldn't find life worth the living."
Green-eyed monster
Envy is a great disturber of inner peace. It's not a vice I have very great trouble with.
Only once did I experience a tremendous attack of it.
One of my friends was building a house. She had subcontracted, and for nearly a year she was busy.
The house was worth every bit of the effort it had cost her.
It gleamed like a jewel - the carpets, the curtains, the kitchen, everything was lovely.
I walked from room to room, my mouth open with admiration. Suddenly we came upon a hole in the wall.
"What's that for?" I asked.
My friend giggled. "It's for a safe for my diamonds."
At that moment I felt an indescribable pang of envy. What a dreadful, horrible emotion jealousy is.
I couldn't stand the thought of my friend's having that beautiful home as well as the diamonds.
Odd, isn't it, since I'm not all that keen on jewellery.
Came out with it
I felt that the only way to rid myself of that suffocating emotion was to vent it.
"I could die from jealousy right now", I said quietly to my friend.
She could tell that I meant it.
"Don't be silly", she laughed. "I haven't really got diamonds. I was only pulling your leg."
"That's not the point", I argued. "If you had diamonds they'd belong to you, so why should I feel bad about it? Forgive me for begrudging you your good fortune."
That was the end of my spiteful jealousy, I'm glad to say.
Pitiable
I sometimes feel others might be envious of me, and that always amazes me, because if I were anybody by myself, I certainly wouldn't envy me with my bagful of problems.
And it's not as though I own diamonds. Yet remembering that horrible sensation only too well, I pity anyone beset by jealousy.
My eldest daughter seems to have inherited my inner contentment. A conversation she had when she was nineteen went something like this:
"Gosh, Whittle", a fellow employee remarked, "I can't understand your staying with your parents when you could be free from such authority in your own accommodation.
"You share your bedroom with your sisters, you have to obey your father, you give him sixty rands a month while you'd only pay forty-five here . . . I simply don't understand you."
Nothing to do
"I like it at home", my daughter shrugged. "When I spent a few months at the hostel I nearly died of boredom.
In our house there are people messing, arguing and building in every room of the house.
"There's a radio on in one room, the TV in the other, and we have a garden with a dog and a cat if the noise inside gets too much.
"My father lets me use his car any time I want to go somewhere. He paid for the car and still pays for the petrol, repairs, third party and licence.
"I don't buy toothpaste, soap, shampoo, shoe polish. I'm saving for an oversease trip next hear. If I stayed at the hostel I'd never be able to afford that.
"We're going on holiday soon. I just get into the car with my clobber, my dad sees to the rest. I'd be a fool to move from home."
Pop-up refuge
"But good heavens, don't you every fight with your parents?"
"Well, sometimes they fight with me, but then I submerge until they get over it, and I've found they regain their tempers as quickly as they lose them."
Good for my daughter, I say. I certainly didn't possess that outlook when I was her age, neither did my husband.
But we both found that though you may have freedom, when you're on your own, you also have a lot of responsibility you don't carry while living with your parents.
Never lonely
Before my younger sister's marriage, she was often asked why she stayed with my mother instead of moving out on her own.
"Why should my mom be lonely in a flat at one end of Johannesburg, and I be lonely in another?" she replied.
"I pay the rent, my mom pays for the food. I buy the materials, she makes the clothes. We're happy."
It makes sense, and it all boils down to inner contentment.
The best way to find happiness is, to be satisfied with the ordinary, everyday things you don't read about in magazines, but which are the yeast of life's dough.
Catherine Nicolette
Those were the days. How well I had it made. I moved out of home at age twenty-one to follow the ministry and Charity path.
I look back to the days at home with fondness.
I've had a wonderful life, met wonderful people and seen magnificent countries.
But there was something uniquely special about Casa Whittle with parents, kids, neighbourhood scallywags, dogs and cats chasing in and out of the rooms until nightfall eventually bought peace and quiet; and one or two snores.
If I had the opportunity to get the financial benefits I then enjoyed for sixty rand I'd snatch the contract out of the offerer's hand so fast they wouldn't see the ink drying on the signature before they received it back . . .
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