Helen Keller is reported to have given this pertinent advice: "Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you will form an invincible host against difficulty. Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within."
We find happiness within as we awake to our spiritual identity as God's image, or reflection. Luke 17:21 . Christ Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is within you." Joy, satisfaction, and completeness are within the true consciousness and individuality of us all, because the real man expresses the qualities of God, infinite Soul. Real joy is eternal. No one gives it to us, and as Jesus said, "Your joy no man taketh from you." John 16:22.
Most of us appreciate our association with loving friends as one of earth's greatest privileges. Friendship is natural and beautiful. But for many years I looked to personal friendships for my main source of joy. I was plagued with a restless and discontented disposition. Unless I was constantly with friends or engaged in social affairs or entertainment of some sort, I was bored and lonely. Later, I came across this question in Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy: "Would existence without personal friends be to you a blank?" The very thought of being "without personal friends" repelled me. The statement continues: "Then the time will come when you will be solitary, left without sympathy; but this seeming vacuum is already filled with divine Love. When this hour of development comes, even if you cling to a sense of personal joys, spiritual Love will force you to accept what best promotes your growth." Science and Health, p. 266.
