Voluntary Suffering
Human beings are constantly in search of the happiness that incessantly escapes them, for spotless happiness does not exist on the earth. Nevertheless, despite the vicissitudes that form an unavoidable procession in this life, they might at least enjoy relative happiness; however, they search for it in perishable things subject to the same vicissitudes, that is, in material pleasures instead of the pleasures of the soul, which are a foretaste of the imperishable pleasures of heaven. Instead of seeking peace of mind – the only real happiness in this world – they are avid for anything that can agitate and upset them. And oddly enough, they seem to create on purpose the torments that were up to them to avoid.
Are there any greater torments than those caused by envy and jealousy? For the envious or jealous there is no rest; they are in a constant fever. What they do not have and what others do have causes them insomnia; the successes of their rivals make them giddy; their emulation is exerted only to eclipse their neighbors; all their joy consists in inciting in those as senseless as themselves the raging jealousy they themselves possess. Poor senseless beings, in effect, are those who do not imagine that perhaps tomorrow they will have to leave behind all such futilities, which, by coveting them, poison their lives! It is not to them that these words apply “Blessed are the afflicted, for they shall be comforted,” since their preoccupations are not those that bring compensation in heaven.
On the other hand, how many torments will those who know how to be content with what they have spare themselves, those who behold without envy what they do not have, and who do not try to appear to be what they are not. These are always wealthy, since, if they would look beneath themselves instead of above, they would always see persons who have even less. They are serene because they do not create imaginary needs for themselves. And is not serenity in the midst of life’s storms real happiness?
Fenelon (Lyon, 1860)