A sip of happiness

 

Happiness is primarily an acceptance of one’s situation in life. It might not come to you even in a palace if you don’t really settle inside the walls and within your skin. You are a cranky host, so it will avoid you. And it will definitely come to visit your slum hut if it finds you an unashamed, guilt free, kind host. As an old, poor charwoman, whom Somerset Maugham meets after many years in 1949, when there had been lots of developmental works in the meanwhile, says to him: ‘They have cleaned up the slums and the dirt, and all the happiness and joy has gone with it.’