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Pursuit of Happiness

Drifting Into Misery

By Isabelle MacRae Hoover

IS the easiest thing in the world to drift into an unhappy way of life. The person who always takes the line of least resistance and accepts whatever comes along is moving steadily toward misery. Happiness is an achievement. It requires effort, difficult choices and the willingness to give up an immediate pleasure for the sake of a greater and more permanent satisfaction in the future. We have this week a long letterṛ from a woman who, partly) "In my bitterness and loneliness I through ill luck and partly through became friends with a man where her own poor choices, finds herI work who had family problems self in an intolerable situation. of his own. We used to sit over a She is now only 37 but she has cup of coffee and tell our troubles been through three marriages, all to each other. It was a great comof them ending unhappily. fort to both of us. First thing we When she was 16, she tells us.knew we were in love. But he has she "foolishly ran away from four children and his wife's relighome" to marry a man of 28. Ațion forbids "divorce.

year later her husband died leav"I can't tell you how much I ing her to struggle on as best she suffer from a sense of guilt. I could with an infant son. At 20 have done nothing to separate this she married a divorced man with[man from his wife, but my whole a strong and winsome personality, being rebels within me because my He promised her the world but heʼrelationship with the man I love is turned out to have a streak of not clear-cut and above board. I such shocking cruelty that she now see clearly that this is the lived in constant fear of him. Aft-greatest mistake of my life, but I er nine years of misery she didon't know what to do about it." vorced him.

Yields Again

This woman seems to be an essentially good person, warm-hearted and outgoing. She has been beShe thought she was through trayed over and over by her loneliwith marriage. But when she wasiness and need for companionship. 33 she yielded to the flattering At every turn in life she has alcourtship of a wealthy and dis-lowed circumstances and external tinguished man. When they were pressures to decide her course. married she discovered he was a The time has come when she must homosexual who wanted a wife for make a choice between increasing a coverup. The marriage was anmisery and the austere happiness nulled. of self-respect. She should give up Now, at 37, she finds herself in, this man and move to a new comlove again. But this time it is ajmunity. She is young enough to guilty love and the first flush ofị make a fresh start and she is old happiness is already giving way enough to guard against impulsive to remorse. This is what she says folly.

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(Oxyright, 1951, instelle MatĦae Flower