Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 250, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 October 1915 — NO REAL CAUSE FOR “BLUES" [ARTICLE]

NO REAL CAUSE FOR “BLUES"

Happiness and Unhappiness Always Irrational and Bpring From Trivial Things. Happiness and unhappiness are irrational. They are outside of theorising or philosophy. A trivial incident sends our spirits up or down. "Thinking backward” is how the Germans describe melancholia. The loneliness that is experienced in crowded places, and the yearning for days gone by or for far-off scenes creep unannounced into the heart. Real troubles do not kill the Joy of living. Catastrophe and hardship challenge the soul to combat, and there is a grim pleasure in meeting and grappling with adversity. The slumping of precious illusions, the chilling fogs of misunderstanding, jealousy, envy and self-pity pile up at times to obscure the vision. Illusions which are our playthings and our reasons to be alive no longer gleam and glisten. Drab reality supplants the radiant ideal. Every person has believed In his innermost mind that he had a monopoly of sorrow and tribulation. “No one so oppressed as I walks this earth,” complains the unsophisticated wayfarer. Fatalists there be who argue that no one is happier than anyone else and that he who goes down to the depths of woe is merely paying for his ascents to the pinnacles of bliss. —Detroit News.