Choir Notes

Cheerfulness

From Music and the Spoken Word

Delivered By: Lloyd D. Newell • Program 4274

The simple scene is played out someplace every day: A teenage employee serves customers in a deli and ice cream shop with uncommon cheerfulness. She is happy to be there, pleasant, and friendly. She takes an order from a man and then returns a few minutes later with good food and even better good cheer. He sincerely thanks her for being so pleasant and leaves her a big tip.

The young employee will tell you that the tip is nice, but that’s not why she’s cheerful–her cheerfulness is a conscious choice. Who knows the struggle the man was facing, the burden of life’s daily battles, but for a moment in time, a young woman somehow lifted his burden simply by choosing to be cheerful.

Most likely, you’ve had the same experience. You go into a store, and office, an eatery, and you need help. How blessed is the day when you are helped by someone who is simply cheerful. Some would say it’s not very often; others might think it’s more often than not. But whenever it happens, we feel grateful.

And, of course, it works both ways. The interesting thing is that the more cheerful we are, the more we will receive and feel good cheer. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "So of cheerfulness, or a good temper, the more it is spent, the more it remains.”1

Of course, no one is cheerful every waking moment of every day. But think how wonderful life would be if we could just try to be a little more cheerful in our interactions with others. Like the true story of the man in the deli and the teenage worker, we just might find that the more good cheer is spent, the more it remains.

1. Richard Alan Krieger, comp., Civilization’s Quotations: Life’s Ideal (2002), 62.