The happiest moments of life are when we are in agreement with that around us; when we see things as something good, not as something alien, but friendly. Indeed we can make the world seem like a monstrous place if we look on every object with fear and mistrust, but a wonderful place if we look at every object with joy and love. As we see a thing that way it is unto us.

There is always something to be happy about, just as if we try hard enough we can always find something to feel bad or sad about. Though I think it is much better to be happy. The world is filled with happy making things. There are always the birds that sing, the sun that shines, the breeze that blows, and many other happiness helpers. A person would have to be awfully unreceptive not to notice them sometime.

I suppose if we try hard enough we might be able to block out every bit of happiness that dwells around us; I mean really try hard, but it would be rather difficult, and besides why would we want to do that? There is a whole world of happiness if we only look for it.

In all the world nothing costs so little, and is so easy to give, and yet provides so much good, as a smile. The person who finds something to smile at cannot be depressed or sad for long. It is always possible to find something to smile at, something to be happy about. Even under the worst of conditions a smile can do no harm, and it may do a lot of good.

There are some courageous people who smile while very sick, even at the point of death. One cannot help but admire and respect such a person as that. Their smile gives them strength as well as their loved ones and those around them. A smile is a powerful thing.

The effects of a smile may be truly amazing. Such a little thing, and yet such a big thing is a smile. In fact a smile might be called a cure-all. Those diseases and distresses which a smile cannot cure, it at least lessens the pain. Take a gentle, sincere smile, and add a bit of love, hope, and understanding and you have the formula for peace and happiness.

What is it one breathes sometimes? It is more than air, it is hope. How immortal is hope! I have had some bad experiences, some good experiences, but the remembrance of stepping out into the cool fresh air and breathing in deeply of hope outlasts them all.

When we have no hope, when we expect nothing from tomorrow, when the darkness overwhelms our soul, then are we truly near the depths of despair. Take hope away, and you might as well take away life, for the two are inseparable. Think of all the good things that have come from hope, and then think of all the terrible things that have resulted from a lack of hope, and you begin to see the power of hope.

What is this breath that flows into us and makes us feel there is good in the world, that there is good to come, and that there is reason to life? Perhaps that breath is the breath that God breathed into living man. Hope maybe is that breath of life.

As the flight of hours do swiftly pass by me, I do not know whether to be sad or glad. Perhaps I should be glad for having had the previlege to have lived those hours, and yet I am sad that they are past and gone forever and I didn't do more good with them.

Gone with those hours are my lost oportunities, my failure to take advantage of them and do more to serve God and to help other people. There is so much I could have done with all those lost hours. But I still have the future for a while maybe, and I pray that in the future I do better.

I pray that in the future I make every hour worthwhile, and make every hour mean something. I pray that in the future I use each hour wisely, and do something good in each hour I am allotted. Hours can be wonderful things rightly used, but they can be a great burden used in a wrong way. So it is all up to me whether my hours serve a good end, or a bad end, a useful purpose, or a useless purpose.

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