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'THINK on THESE THINGS'
By Joyce Sequichie Hifler

Bad feelings are burdens. When we get to the point of believing the whole world is sour because we don't understand it, we have a lot of self-searching to do. Maybe we helped it to lose its sweetness. Maybe we're the bad apple that soured the whole lot.

Our first thought should be to make amends. Sometimes we can't, and when such is the case we need to get out of the way and let time and nature take its course.

Life is too beautiful to go on being a bitter pill that insists that everyone swallow it. As in the words of Caleb C. Colton, an English clergyman around the turn of the century, "the man who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own dispositions, will waste his life in fruitless efforts, and multiply the grief which he proposes to remove."

We need to unburden ourselves by forgetting our problems and doing something that will put a smile on someone else's face.

The quickest way to solve the problem of hurt feelings is to inquire if this situation is important to the whole of existence. Does this particular thing mean more than any of the other things of life? It is amazing how quickly trials fade into nothingness when faced with this question. It places before us the need to decide here and now the meaning of our whole existence.

There are not many things in our lives that we can truthfully say mean everything to us. The small things are important and very dear, but the really significant things we count on one hand - life, our loved ones, our good desires, our faith, and our nation.

One of the most magnified situations in this day is taking life too seriously. In the stress of too much mental confusion, we seem unable to laugh off so many little irritations. We let personality rule us into making each little problem the source of great anxiety and dramatically lay hold of it until it chokes us.

The worthwhile side of this life is too important to let ourselves become involved with things that mean little to us. Too much of the trouble in the world is caused from ego-building important that would never be missed in anyone's existence.

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