Useless Fretting | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 27, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 45.

Useless Fretting.

Few of us are satisfied with our friends; and one fruitful source of unhappiness in this world is an often unconscious desire that seems to possess us to make them over to our own liking. This is frequently an ill-defined feeling that we fail to recognize at once in all its absurdity; but a little self-examination will show us how we vex and worry ourselves into a fever of dissatisfaction over a failure on a friend's part to conform to all our ideas of right and propriety. Or possibly the defect in his character is so slight as to show itself in nothing more than a lack of congeniality of taste; yet we grieve over it as a sorry fault, and lament the unloveliness of human character until we grow morbid. Now as there is no remedy for this evil, why not devote our best energies to cultivating the habit of "not minding"? Let friends and acquaintances and fellow-creatures in general be as they will, let us see to it that we devote ourselves to admiring that which is lovely in their character instead of censuring the other, and we will soon forget the disagreeable. Thus will we avoid much misery and discomfort to self, while we aid in developing the good there is in others.—Sel.