I have noticed that many people who seem to the casual observer to be favorites of fortune, having no large and serious troubles to worry about, so magnify their small ones that life loses much of its joy. Most men and women who rebel at their lot in life fancy that their discontent lies in the deprivation of some definite thing. Had it not been for this or that unfavorable condition, their lives would have been happy and successful. One possesses too small a share of this world’s goods and continually allows his thoughts to dwell upon what he might have had or might have done if he had been blessed with wealth. He forgets to appreciate and to be grateful for health, family, friends, and a host of other blessings. He has the lurking feeling that wealth is the one thing which would have made his life happy, in spite of the fact that he knows that it has not brought happiness to many who possess it. So he settles down to a discontented, second-rate life.

With another, it is a lack of robust health that causes discontent. Such a person forgets that much of the best work of the world has been accomplished by men of frail health, as, for instance, Darwin and Herbert Spencer. Another finds a source of unhappiness in his environment in life, or in a lack of particular advantages and opportunities. He is sure that he might have become an artist or a musician or a scholar had not Fate been so unkind as to deprive him of opportunity. Yet we have but to point to scores of persons who have won the highest success in these fields in spite of seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

Some women are unhappy because they cannot obtain the position in society for which they believe themselves fitted; others crave luxury and ease denied them. Many women long to exchange their idleness for a work in life. As to work, it sometimes seems as if half the workers of the world are envying the other half their particular field of labor. Each sees the advantages of the other’s task, but not its disadvantages. The laboring man envies the business or professional man the supposed ease of his work and its larger returns. The business or professional man often looks with envy upon the day laborer, because of his freedom from care and the simplicity of his life. And so each looks over the edge of his work, discontented, to that of his neighbor. How seldom are we willing to admit that the cause of our discontent lies within ourselves!

It is true that there is a discontent which is right. It is discontent with what we are and it is born of aspiration. One who feels this divine discontent well knows that his life has not been as fruitful as it should have been, and he is determined that the future shall redeem, as far as possible, the inadequacy of the past. He says with Whittier:—

If ever we find ourselves satisfied with our attainments it simply means that we have a very low standard of success. Some one has said, “One should never believe that he has succeeded, but always that he is going to succeed.”

To be discontented with what we have, that is, with our possessions and our circumstances, is a very different matter. Either we can change them or we cannot. If we can and do not, we have only ourselves to blame. But what shall be said regarding those unfavorable outward circumstances of your life to which you must submit? Simply this: If you cannot have what you like, learn to like what you have. Resolve that no unfavorable conditions shall be powerful enough to defeat you and spoil your life. Master your circumstances instead of letting them master you. To master circumstances does not necessarily mean to change them. Sometimes it means merely to change our attitude toward them, so that they may become a source of strength instead of weakness. There is always much that a wise and energetic person can do to change the conditions of his life, yet there will be left in every life certain things that cannot be altered. The real test of our character is our attitude toward these things.

There is nothing more certain than that if you are going to accomplish anything in life you must use the vantage-ground you have, not the better vantage-ground of another, which is not yours. Do not explain what you would have done if you had had this one’s or that one’s opportunity. You will be tested by the use you make of the opportunities that have been given to you.

It is sometimes pointed out that too many college girls, returning to their homes after graduation, lead restless, discontented lives. The college is often blamed for this, but most unjustly. The difficulty may be with the girl herself, but I believe it is just as often with her family and friends, who expect impossible things of her. Too often an active, ambitious girl is forced to settle down into a life of comparative uselessness. The inspiration of her college years is still strong upon her. All the powers of heart, mind, and soul have been awakened. She has gained a wide outlook, and the needs of this very needy world have been brought home to her sympathetic heart. She feels within her the power to do something which will count in making the world a better place. To be a mere household ornament does not seem to her adequate. Too frequently there is the strongest objection to her taking up any definite work. She is expected to be happy in comparative idleness and without the stimulus that always comes from feeling that one’s life is counting for something. Some of the discontent of the educated young woman who has not yet found her place in life may be traced to these causes.

Yet sometimes her discontent has its root in herself, and is due to a lack of adaptation. Many a young woman who leaves school or college with dreams of an inspiring and useful work in the world finds herself obliged to remain at home because of family necessity. She may even have to live in a place apparently devoid of interest, amid surroundings that seem commonplace, with no stimulating or congenial companionship. Sometime you may find yourself in exactly that position. What will you do about it? Will you adopt a course that will not only make those about you miserable, but will dwarf and narrow your own life? Or can you be brave and strong enough to follow the path that will enlarge and beautify your life as well as bring good to others? If you are in doubt what to do, ask yourself what an Alice Freeman Palmer would have done with those meager surroundings, those narrow opportunities and uninspiring duties. You know the answer. A great soul like hers would have created its own atmosphere and soon the desert would have blossomed as the rose. She would have seen possibilities in the dreariest situation. She would have found work to do in the smallest and most uninteresting community. Wherever there is a community there is work to be done—little children to be guided into right ways, the sick to be visited, the discouraged to be cheered. Wherever you find a church, there is an opportunity for service. Who ever heard of a church that had workers enough? Wherever there is a city, town, or village, there is work to be done in the direction of civic betterment.

Is your life restricted by certain responsibilities not of your own choosing, yet from which you cannot honorably escape—nay, would not escape? Do you long for freedom, for the power to carve out your own destiny in your own way? How swiftly you would move forward if you could tread the path of your own choosing! Do not think that you are unusual in this longing. It is difficult to be reconciled to the limitations placed upon us. Those of whom you are most envious are probably in their turn envying others who have not their particular limitations. Some of them may be envying you. A lesson which we should all learn as early as possible is that the restrictions of our lives often point the way to largeness. Whenever we find ourselves indulging in self-pity because of the limitations under which we labor, it will be well to call to mind some of the many splendid and fruitful lives that have attained to strength and power in spite of restrictions far more severe, or rather partly because of them: Lincoln, gaining a meager knowledge of books by the light of a pine knot; Darwin, doing his life-work in the face of physical disabilities that would have made useless invalids of most of us; Helen Keller, denied all the most important avenues of communication with the outside world, yet achieving results that would put most of us to shame; Louisa M. Alcott, writing her charming stories in the midst of arduous toil and pathetic privations endured for the sake of her loved ones; and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, learning from suffering what she told the world in song. History is full of these examples, and the future will be just as rich in such lives as the past has been. Those who are to be the leaders of the next generation are even now, many of them, having a severe struggle with adverse circumstances.

Just as we should make the best of the things about us and of the circumstances of our lives, so we should make the best of the people about us. Must you live apart from the friends whose society is most congenial to you? Again, if you cannot have about you the people you like, then like the people you have about you. It is astonishing how much progress can be made when one starts out with resolution in this direction. Try it and you will be amazed at discovering likable qualities in those with whom you supposed you had little in common.

And just as you are to make the best of other people, so you should learn to make the best of yourself. By this I do not mean make the most of yourself. It goes without saying that one should do that. Many a person who is successful in matching himself against outward obstacles feels discouraged when he faces his own nature and recognizes the return of faults which he hoped he had overcome. No struggle is so severe as that which one wages with himself. Sometimes we become disheartened at our failure to conquer faults and to overcome wrong tendencies. When it is a question of right and wrong, there is no course open to us but to continue to wage the battle. No compromise with wrong is possible.

Yet there are other limitations which should be regarded in a different light. Perhaps we have overestimated our capacity and have expected the impossible of ourselves. Paris is full of discouraged artists who had looked forward to a noteworthy career that never can be realized. Every publisher of books has some comprehension of the enormous number of would-be authors there are of whom the world will never hear. Ambition is good, but disappointed ambition too often embitters life. Most of us have some limitations which cannot be removed. Certain of these limitations it is well to accept and not beat one’s wings forever against the bars.

Others may surpass you because of greater natural endowments or larger opportunity, or both, but this should not move you from the even tenor of your way. No less faulty than the complacent, self-satisfied life is the life spoiled because of unfulfilled ambitions. We should accept ourselves, with the limitations that cannot be removed, and go about it to make, with the material at hand, the most successful life possible. The highest of all attainments, the living of a successful life, depends not upon outward circumstances, not upon opportunities, not upon freedom from annoyances or even from trials and sorrows. In the last analysis it depends upon one’s power to make the best and the most of those things which belong to his portion. If one can do that, life has no terrors for him. No misfortune or disappointment can prevail against him or disturb the serenity of his soul. He can say with Henley:—