You will find, in the effort to reach a higher spirituality in your daily life, that the small things try your patience and your strength more than the greater ones.
Home life, like business life, is composed of an accumulation of trifles.
There are people who bear great sorrows with resignation and seem to gain a certain dignity and force of character through trouble, but who are utterly vanquished by trivial annoyances.
The old-fashioned orthodox “Christian” was frequently of this order. Death, poverty, and misfortune he bore without complaining, and became ofttimes a more agreeable companion in times of deepest sorrow. He regarded all such experiences as the will of God, and bowed to them. Yet, if his dinner was late, his coffee below the standard, if his eye-glasses were misplaced, or his toe trodden upon, he becomes a raging lion, and his roar drove his affrighted household into dark corners.
There have been neighborhood Angels, who watched beside the dying sinner, sustained orphans, and widows, and endured great troubles sublimely like martyrs. But if a dusty shoe trod upon a freshly washed floor, or husband or child came tardily to the breakfast table, or lingered outside the door after the regulation hour for retiring—lo, the Angel became a virago, or a droning mosquito with persistent sting.
The New Philosophy demands serenity and patience through small trials, as well as fortitude in meeting life’s larger ills. It demands, too, that we seek to avoid giving others unnecessary irritation by a thoughtless disregard of the importance of trifles.
A man is more likely to keep calm if he wakes in the night and discovers that the house is on fire than he is if, on being fully prepared to retire, he finds the only mug on the third story is missing from his wash-stand, or the cake of toilet-soap he asked for the day before has been forgotten.
A mother bears the affliction of a crippled child with more equanimity than she is able to bring to bear upon the continual thoughtlessness of a strong one.
To be kind means to be thoughtful. The kindest and most loving heart will sometimes forget and be careless; but it cannot be perpetually forgetful and careless of another’s wishes and needs, even in the merest trifles.
“The Heart of the New Thought” (1903) by Ella Wheeler Wilcox