There is probably no one in the world today whose happiness at some time has not seemed to fluctuate with changing circumstances. Most of us think that we have good reason for feeling less than completely satisfied. We think this way not because we really have good reason, but because we have not sufficiently comprehended or entirely accepted the teachings of Jesus. "These things have I spoken unto you," he said, "that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full" (John 15:11). This word "full" is significant, for it admits of no moments, even of the shortest duration, for anything less than perfect joy. All of us need to awaken further to the meaning of real happiness and to claim it more emphatically as inevitable and right for us to experience every moment.
Even those who think that they are very happy find, upon examining their experience, that there are times when they become temporarily distressed or concerned, irritated or frightened, about something. Ordinarily, mortals consider happiness as something that is apt to vary with the evidences before the physical senses. This is a false sense of happiness, the opposite of the true. When conditions in our lives or the lives of those dear to us are favorable, we say that we are happy. Contrariwise, untoward conditions often have a tendency to make us believe that we are unhappy. Happiness of this sort is a product of human experience. It depends upon the apparent condition of matter, and is as mutable and unreliable as are the variable conditions of matter. In short, happiness that is only a mental reaction to what the material senses behold is no more than a state of mortal mind, and is not really happiness at all. It is mortal mind's substitute for what really exists in the ever-satisfied and all-satisfying divine Mind. This false sense of happiness does not belong to man any more than sorrow does, for nothing that is material or the effect of material circumstances can condition the man of God's creating.
True happiness is of an entirely different nature. It is not a mortal mind reaction, but is an eternal fact of true being, and as much a part of man's nature as are health, intelligence, and life. Mary Baker Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 76), "The sinless joy, —the perfect harmony and immortality of Life, possessing unlimited divine beauty and goodness without a single bodily pleasure or pain,—constitutes the only veritable, indestructible man, whose being is spiritual." What a glorious thing to realize! Joy of the most satisfying kind, more satisfying than human thought has ever realized, is a fundamental quality in the nature of man. True happiness and life are one. Neither of them really exists without the other.
