Text of the meditation
Whoever has not learned how to be gentle, loving and happy has learned very little. Despondency, irritability, anxiety, complaining, condemning and grumbling: all these are thought-cankers, mind-diseases; they are the indications of a wrong mental condition, and those who suffer from them would do well to remedy their thinking and conduct.
It is true there is much sin and misery in the world, so that all our love and compassion are needed, but our misery is not needed; there is already too much of that. No, it is our cheerfulness and our happiness that are needed, for there is too little of that.
We can give nothing better to the world than beauty of life and character; without this, all other things are vain; this is pre-eminently excellent; it is enduring, real, and not to be overthrown, and it includes all joy and blessedness. A person's surroundings are never against them; they are there to aid them.
James Allen (1864–1912), Book of Meditations for Every Day in the Year (1913) – public-domain text, gently modernised.
The original 1913 text is in the public domain.