Cheerfulness – an underrated quality?

Terry Martin, in another occasional essay considers reasons to be cheerful:

Although cheerfulness is not an explicitly Christian virtue, nevertheless as a quality and disposition, it has much to commend it. As Joseph Addison wrote:

‘Cheerfulness is the best promoter of health and is as friendly to the mind as to the body.’

Although, to some extent it may be something we are born with, (or without), it can be nurtured and developed. Mark Twain offers some useful advice:

‘The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer somebody else up.’

Cheerfulness therefore can have an altruistic element as we think of others as well as ourselves. Garrison Keillor considers several qualities that are like cheerfulness: happiness (more circumstantial), joy (for angelic beings), blissfulness (is brief), jubilation (is rare), elation (is momentary), gaiety, glee (tends to be cruel), triumph, exultation (too fancy, too formal), delight and euphoria (best to leave it alone), but none quite captures what cheerfulness embodies. [1] He says that ‘Cheerfulness is a choice’; and we therefore must take responsibility to be cheerful.

He goes on, ‘the secret of cheerfulness is, as Buddha and Jesus both said, to give up wanting material things.’ Cheerfulness requires detachment and an ability to live in the moment. It requires, to some extent, a measure of luck or good fortune. It is an attitude that the glass is half full rather than half empty. Most difficult is ‘cheerful in the face of adversity’, (the motto of the Royal Marines).

‘It is about applying yourself in tough situations to being someone who can see the best in things and to being optimistic, positive, hopeful and bringing some brightness.’ [2]

In an article in The Times entitled ‘I’m 25, and suddenly the future has passed’, author Susie Goldsbrough writes, ‘Cheerfulness is just another word for consolation.’ [3]

In the Ignatian tradition, discernment involves two key words: consolation and desolation. What do we mean when we talk of consolation and desolation? We are really only talking about our orientation, and the bottom line is this: which direction is our life taking us – toward God (consolation) or away from him (desolation)? [4]

Remaining cheerful requires that we retain a sense of proportion and can put things in perspective. It is worth remembering the words Jesus spoke to his disciples shortly before his crucifixion:

‘These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.’ [5]

References

1. Keillor, Garrison, Cheerfulness (Prairie Home Productions, 2023).

2. Butler, Shealan Faere, ‘Cheerfulness in the face of adversity’, Vivida Lifestyle (27 November, 2020), available here.

3. Goldsbrough, Susie, ‘I’m 25, and suddenly the future has passed’, The Times (22 May 2023).

4. Silf, Margaret,The Inner Compass (Loyola Press, 2007)

5. John 16:33 (KJV).

Terry Martin is a trustee of the Southampton charity, Caraway – ‘spiritually resourcing the older person’.

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