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HAPPINESS
Why
So
Elusive?
by
Roderick C. Meredith
There is a way to personal success and happiness.
1t
is not complicated.
It
is not mystical. And it really works!
A
A TEEN–
AGER
who
was taught
that to be manly is
to be unemotional,
I was brought to
tears one night in
an unusual way.
I
shall never forget
it.
It was a gorgeous
summer evening in
the American Míd–
west. 1 was walk–
ing tboughtfully
througb the warm
darkness, hearíng
the crickets chírp. 1
was lookíng at an
almost full moon,
which illuminated
the open spaces be–
tween the trees wíth
its gentle light.
Harry's folks were
gone, so 1 carne on
around to the sliding
glass door, which
opened out onto the
patio. Suddenly, my
musings were halted. 1
realized that the beautiful music 1
had been hearing so faintly befare was
coming from the piano just inside the
sliding door, which was open.
October/ November 1981
He was playing beau–
t ifully and most fit–
tingly in that quiet,
luminescent scene
Beethoven's "Moon–
light Sonata."
It
was
the most memorable
rendition of that
piece that
I
had ever
heard. For Harry was
completely blind.
Mistakes Exact
Penaltles
1 watched for a
moment and my eyes
welled up with tears
as Harry's unseeing
eyes stared at the
very moon to whose
beauty this piece has
been dedicated. And
1 was forced to real–
ize that blind Har–
ry-the fellow we
helped here and there
around school since
he Iearned to read
li:
Braille, the boy
~
whose alert and in–
~
quiring mind Iiterally
hungered for the
111•••••1111111~
chance
I
had toread,
There, his upturned face partial–
ly bathed by the moonlight that fil–
tered through the trees and into the
room, sat Harry at the piano bench.
to see, to learn-was
boro blind for a reason.
Common knowledge in the
town had it that the reason was a
mistake one of bis parents made
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