We are depressed, we are
worried; and when we look back, all our departed days of worry and
depression appear to start up and press themselves upon our view to the
exclusion of anything else; so that we are ready to think that we have
never been otherwise than depressed and worried all our life. But when
more cheerful times come, they suggest only such times of cheerfulness,
and no effort will bring back the depression vividly as when we felt
it. It is not selfishness or heartlessness, it is the result of an
inevitable law of mind, that people in happy circumstances should
resolutely believe that it is a happy world after all; for, looking
back, and looking around, the mind refuses to take distinct note of
anything that is not somewhat akin to its present state. And so, if any
ordinary man, who is not a distempered genius or a great fool, tells you
that he is always miserable, don't believe him. He feels so now, but he
does not always feel so. There are periods of brightening in the darkest
lot. Very, very few live in unvarying gloom. Not but that there is
something very pitiful (by which I mean deserving of pity) in what
may be termed the Micawber style of mind,--in the stage of hysteric
oscillations between joy and misery.
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