The Clergyman's Wife and Other Sketches/The Capacity for Enjoyment

by Anna Cora Mowatt

THE CAPACITY FOR ENJOYMENT.

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ratitude emanates from the sense of guileless enjoyment, as perfume rises from the flower. The sombre shadow of premature decay rests upon the youngest being, the instant that he ceases to enjoy. The child enjoys involuntarily, unreasoningly; its spontaneous gladness gushes forth like the matin song of the lark, and, like the lark's carol, it is an unconscious hymn of thanks for the capacity it has received. But as childhood merges into youth, youth into manhood, how often the blessed faculty of enjoyment decreases until it is wholly lost!

Pity the man from whom it has departed, for its absence speaks of mental and physical abuse; of unholy indulgence that vitiates the taste, of satiety that palls the appetite, of sin that destroys the powers. All the bloom of his existence has been rudely brushed away. The finest chords of his spirit have become voiceless. Touch them with the finger of Nature, of Art, of Feeling, they give forth no sound. The dust of life's prosaic cares collects upon his heart, until no wind of heaven, however fragrant or refreshing, can disperse the ashy heap. Can this be in accordance with the laws of order? Is not the highest happiness promised as the guerdon of the greatest goodness? What would avail the offered gift, without the capacity to receive the boon? It was manifestly designed that we should guard and cultivate this Heaven-bestowed faculty for enjoyment. In a healthful, grateful, coherent mind, it may be preserved, increased, matured from year to year, even to the very sunset of existence. The objects by which it is awakened vary, the species of enjoyment itself changes; but the expanding of the soul to pleasurable sensations remains.

Mark how quickly the man who wraps himself up in mere business avocations, and walks ploddingly, with head bent earthward, to his labors, loses his taste for the beauties of nature, for literature, for music, for the arts, for all elevating and refining pursuits. See how he carries to his fireside a dull and joyless influence, which even the smiles of a tender wife and the prattle of lovely children cannot counteract. With him the capacity for enjoyment is not merely uncultivated, but stifled; nipped in the bud. It has never been permitted to force a single blossom through the sheath of circumstance. And when in a few years the man acquires the great wealth for which he bartered this precious faculty, when rest invites him, and even prudence bids him relax his labors, that his risks may cease, where are his resources against weariness? Not all his gold can purchase back the lost capacity for enjoyment.

Do not imagine that by enjoyment we mean the frittering away of life in the pursuit of trivialities commonly termed pleasure, but the recognition, the appreciation, of the thousand daily blessings that are spread before our careless eyes. Work itself, and the performance of every-day duties, are allied to enjoyment in a cheerful nature—or at least they give to enjoyment the zest that hunger imparts to the simplest food. No man loses the capacity to enjoy sooner than the luxurious idler. Listless inactivity is an incubus upon the soul, that gradually deadens its powers, until at last a pleasant emotion becomes an unhoped-for though much coveted event, a positive thrill of rapture, an occurrence barely possible. Thus the mind of the world-worn blasé is involuntarily closed up against the influent heavens, from whence all pure enjoyment descends.

The selfish man impairs this faculty not less inevitably. He substitutes a cold and spurious gratification for the genuine emotion, and too surely discovers that the retributive pang and penalty united to the former, can never be escaped.

True happiness must be communicated. It is intensified and increased in proportion to its participation with others. The greater the number of recipients, the deeper, purer, and more ineffable the joy experienced by the communicator. Can angels know a higher felicity than the bliss of initiating the redeemed into their own states of beatitude?

Happiness would not be so rare, so fleeting, nor should we pursue the fugitive through so many forbidden paths, if the healthy eapacity for enjoyment were cultivated as an actual, essential virtue. The mental powers would be preserved in perennial freshness, the poetry of existence would not be stripped away with the blossoms of youth, Ennui would not be the presiding genius in so many households, nor ingratitude for simple blessings the dominant sin of so many hearts.