Quit Your Worrying! Part 14

And then we know, how, with crafty, devilish cunning, Iago plays upon these suspicions, fans their spark into flames. He pretends to be doing it purely on Oth.e.l.lo's account and accuses himself that:

it is my nature's plague To spy into abuses, and yet my jealousy Shapes faults that are not:

and then cries out:

O beware, my lord, of jealousy!

It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock The meat it feeds on. That cuckold lives in bliss Who certain of his fate, loves not his wronger; But, O, what d.a.m.ned minutes tells he o'er Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves!

There, indeed, the woe of the suspicious is shown. His minutes are really "d.a.m.ned;" peace flies his heart, rest from his couch, sanity from his throne, and, _yielding_ himself, he becomes filled with murderous anger and imperils his salvation here and hereafter.

CHAPTER XXI

THE WORRIES OF IMPATIENCE

How many of our worries come from impatience? We do not want to wait until the fruition of our endeavors comes naturally, until the time is ripe, until we are ready for that which we desire. We wish to overrule conditions which are beyond our power; we fail to accept the inevitable with a good grace; we refuse to believe in our circ.u.mscriptions, our limitations, and in our arrogance and pride express our anger, our indignation, our impatience.

I have seen people whose auto has broken down, worried fearfully because they would not arrive somewhere as they planned, and in their impatient fretfulness they annoyed, angered, and upset all around them, without, in one single degree, improving their own condition or hastening the repair of the disaster. What folly; what more than childish foolishness.

A child may be excused for its impatience and petulance for it has not yet learned the inevitable facts of life--such as that breaks must be repaired, tires must be made so that they will not leak, and that the gasoline tank cannot be empty if the machine is to run. But a man, a woman, is supposed to have learned these incontrovertible facts, and should, at the same time, have learned acquiesence in them.

A train is delayed; one has an important engagement; worry seems inevitable and excusable. But is it? Where is the use? Will it replace the destroyed bridge, renew the washed out track, repair the broken engine? How much better to submit to the inevitable with graceful acceptance of the fact, than to fret, stew, worry, and at the same time, irritate everyone around you.

How serenely Nature rebukes the impatience of the fretful worrier. A man plants corn, wheat, barley, potatoes--or trees, that take five, seven years to come to bearing, such as the orange, olive, walnut, date, etc. Let him fret ever so much, worry all he likes, chafe and fret every hour; let him go and dig up his seeds or plants to urge their upgrowing; let him even swear in his impatient worry and threaten to smash all his machinery, discharge his men, and turn his stock loose; Nature goes on her way, quietly, unmoved, serenely, unhurried, undisturbed by the folly of the one creature of earth who is so senseless as to worry--viz., man.

Many a man's hair has turned gray, and many a woman's brow and cheeks have become furrowed because of fretful, impatient worry over something that could not be changed, or hastened, or improved.

My conception of life is that manhood, womanhood, should rise superior to any and all conditions and circ.u.mstances. Whatever happens, Spirit should be supreme, superior, in control. And until we learn that lesson, life, so far, has failed. Inasmuch as we do learn it, life has become a success.

CHAPTER XXII

THE WORRIES OF ANTIc.i.p.aTION

He crosses every bridge before he comes to it, is a graphic and proverbial rendering of a description of the man who worries in antic.i.p.ation. Something, sure, is going to happen. He is always fearful, not of what is, but of what is going to be. For twenty years he has managed to live and pay his rent, but at the beginning of each month he begins afresh to worry where "next month's rent is going to come from." He's collected his bills fairly well for a business life-time, but if a debtor fails to send in his check on the very day he begins to worry and fear lest he fail to receive it. His wife has given him four children, but at the coming of the fifth he is sure something extraordinarily painful and adverse is going to happen.

He sees--possibly, here, I should say, _she_ sees--their son climbing a tree. She is sure he will fall and break a leg, an arm, or his neck.

Her boy mustn't ride the horse lest he fall and injure himself; if he goes to swim he is surely in danger of being drowned, and she could never allow him or his sister to row in a boat lest it be overturned.

The child must be watched momentarily, lest it fall out of the window, search out a sharp knife, swallow poison, or do some irreparable damage to the bric-a-brac.

Here let me relate an incident the truth of which is vouched for, and which clearly ill.u.s.trates the difference between the att.i.tude of worry and that of trust. One day, when Flattich, a pious minister of the Wurtemberg, was seated in his armchair, one of his foster children fell out of a second-story window, right before him, to the pavement below. He calmly ordered his daughter to go and bring up the child.

On doing so it was found the little one had sustained no injury.

A neighbor, however, aroused by the noise, came in and reproached Flattich for his carelessness and inattention. While she was thus remonstrating, her own child, which she had brought with her, fell from the bench upon which she had seated it, and broke its arm. "Do you see, good woman," said the minister, "if you imagine yourself to be the sole guardian of your child, then you must constantly carry it in your arms. I commend my children to G.o.d; and even though they then fall, they are safer than were I to devote my whole time and attention to them."

Those who antic.i.p.ate evils for their children too often seem to bring down upon their loved ones the very evils they are afraid of. And one of the greatest lessons of life, and one that brings immeasurable and uncountable joys when learned, is, that Nature--the great Father-Mother of us all--is kindly disposed to us. We need not be so alarmed, so fearful, so antic.i.p.atory of evil at her hands.

Charles Warren Stoddard used to tell of the great dread Mark Twain was wont to feel, during the exhaustion and reaction he felt at the close of each of his lectures, lest he should become incapable of further writing and lecturing and therefore become dependent upon his friends and die a pauper. How wonderfully he conquered this demon of perpetual worry all those who know his life are aware; how that, when his publisher failed he took upon himself a heavy financial burden, for which he was in no way responsible, went on a lecture tour around the world and paid every cent of it, and finally died with his finances in a most prosperous condition.

The antic.i.p.atory worries of others are just as senseless, foolish and absurd as were those of Mark Twain, and it is possible for every man to overcome them, even as did he.

The cloud we antic.i.p.ate seldom, if ever, comes, and then, generally, in a different direction from where we sought it. Time spent on looking for the cloud, and figuring how much of injury it will do us had better be utilized in garnering the hay crop, bringing in the lambs, or hauling warm fodder and bedding for them.

There is another side, however, to this worrying antic.i.p.ation of troubles. The ancient philosophers recognized it. Lucan wrote: "The very fear of approaching evil has driven many into peril."

There are those who believe that the very concentration of thought upon a possible evil will bring to pa.s.s the peculiar arrangement of circ.u.mstances that makes the evil. Of this belief I am not competent to speak, but I am fully a.s.sured that it is far from helpful to be contemplating the possibility of evil. In my own life I have found that worrying over evils in antic.i.p.ation has not prevented their coming, and, on the other hand, that where I have boldly faced the situation, without fear and its attendant worries, the evil has fled.

Hence, whether worries in hand, or worries to come, worries real or worries imaginary, the wise, sane and practical course is to kill them all and thus _Quit Your Worrying_.

CHAPTER XXIII

HOW OUR WORRY AFFECTS OTHERS

If worry affected merely ourselves it would be bad enough, but we could tolerate it more than we do. For it is one of the infernal characteristics of worry that our manifestation of it invariably affects others as injuriously as it affects ourselves.

An employer who worries his employees never gets the good work out of them as does the one who has sense enough to keep them happy, good-natured and contented. I was lecturing once for a large corporation. I had two colleagues, who "spelled me" every hour. For much of the time we had no place to rest, work or play between our lectures. Our engagement lasted the better part of a year, and the result was that, during that period where our reasonable needs were unprovided for, we all failed to give as good work as we were capable of. We were unnecessarily worried by inadequate provision and our employers suffered. Henry Ford, and men of his type have learned this lesson. Men respond rapidly to those who do not worry them. Governor Hunt and Warden Sims, of Arizona, have learned the same fact in dealing with prisoners of the State Penitentiary. The less the men are "worried" by unnecessarily harsh treatment, absurd and cruel restrictions, curtailment of natural rights, the better they act, the easier they are liable to reform and make good.

Dr. Musgrove to his _Nervous Breakdowns_, tells a story of two commanders which well ill.u.s.trates this point:

In a certain war two companies of men had to march an equal distance in order to meet at a particular spot. The one arrived in perfect order, and with few signs of exhaustion, although the march had been an arduous one. The other company reached the place utterly done up and disorganised. It was all a question of leaders.h.i.+p; the captain of the first company had known his way and kept his men in good order, while the captain of the second company had never been sure of himself, and had hara.s.sed his subordinates with a constant succession of orders and counter-orders, until they had hardly known whether they were on their heads or their heels. That was why they arrived completely demoralised.

In war, as in peace, it is not work that kills so much as worry.

A general may make his soldiers work to the point of exhaustion as Napoleon often did, yet have their almost adoring wors.h.i.+p. But the general who worries his men gets neither their good will nor good work.

A worrying mother can keep a whole house in a turmoil, from father down to the latest baby. The growing boys and girls soon learn to dread the name of "home," and would rather be in school, in the backyard playing, in the attic, at the neighbors, or in the streets, anywhere, than within the sound of their mother's worrying voice, or frowning countenance. A worrying husband can drive his wife distracted, and vice versa. I was dining not long ago with a couple that, from outward appearance, had everything that heart could desire to make them happy. They were young, healthy, had a good income, were _both_ engaged in work they liked, yet the husband worried the wife constantly about trifles. If she wished to set the table in a particular way he worried because she didn't do it some other way; if she drove one of their autos he worried because she didn't take the other; and when she wore a spring-day flowery kind of a hat he worried her because his mother never wore any other than a black hat. The poor woman was distracted by the absolute absurdities, frivolities and inconsequentialities of his worries, yet he didn't seem to have sense to see what he was doing. So I gave him a plain practical talk--as I had been drawn into a discussion of the matter without any volition on my part--and urged him to quit irritating his wife so foolishly and so unnecessarily.

Some teachers worry their pupils until the latter fail to do the work they are competent to do; and the want of success of many an ambitious teacher can often be attributed to his, her, worrying disposition.

Remember, therefore, that when you worry you are making others unhappy as well as yourself, you are putting a damper, a blight, upon other lives as well as your own, you are destroying the efficiency of other workers as well as your own, you are robbing others of the joy of life which G.o.d intended them freely to possess. So that for the sake of others, as well as your own, it becomes an imperative duty that you

QUIT YOUR WORRYING.

CHAPTER XXIV

WORRY VERSUS INDIFFERENCE

The aim and object of all striving in life should be to grow more human, more humane, less selfish, more helpful to our fellows. Any system of life that fails to meet this universal need is predestined to failure. When, therefore, I urge upon my readers that they quit their worrying about their husbands or wives, sons and daughters, neighbors and friends, the wicked and the good, I do not mean that they are to harden their hearts and become indifferent to their welfare. G.o.d forbid! No student of the human heart, of human life, and of the Bible can long ignore the need of a caution upon these lines.