Why Worry?, George Lincoln Walton [bts books to read .TXT] 📗

children, education, art, science, racial progress, or to the high destiny of man. You are simply a collector of money for its own sake, with no appreciation of what it might represent if you were really serious and really a business man or man of affairs. There are many like you in our asylum wards, where they are known as chronic maniacs. Here is one who collects bits of glass, old corks, and pieces of string. There sits another with a lap full of pebbles, twigs and straws.”

Courtney (in Pyle’s “Personal Hygiene”) says, “The brain is an organ which, under proper training, is capable of performing an immense amount of work, provided only that the work is of a varied character and does not produce a corresponding amount of mental disquietude. The importance of the emotions, especially the depressing emotions such as grief, anxiety, and worry, as factors in the brain exhaustion, cannot easily be overestimated.”

The obvious corollary to this proposition is that the constitutional worrier is likely to break down under an amount of work which produces no such effect upon the average normal individual.

The only quarrel I have with the name neurasthenia is that it diverts attention from the real condition oftenest to be treated, namely, the faulty mental tendency, and directs attention to an assumed debility which may or may not exist. Misdirected energy, rather than weakness, is the difficulty with one who is ready and anxious to walk miles to satisfy a doubt, or to avoid crossing an open square, and who will climb a dozen flights of stairs rather than be shut up in an elevator. Even the exhaustion that follows long attention to business is quite as often due to worry and allied faulty mental habits as to the work itself. In most cases the phobias, the doubts, and the scruples, instead of being the result of breakdown, must be counted among its principal causes.

This is why simple rest and abstinence from work so often fail to accomplish the cure that should follow if the exhaustion were due simply to overwork. In the “neurasthenic” rest from work only redoubles the worries, the doubts and the scruples, and the obsession to improve his time only adds to his nervous exhaustion. If a European trip is undertaken, the temperament responsible for the original breakdown causes him to rush from gallery to gallery, from cathedral to cathedral, so that no moment may be lost. Not infrequently it so happens that the patient returns more jaded than ever.

The neurasthenic is not infrequently a confirmed obsessive, with all the faulty mental habits of this temperament. If he cannot make up his mind it is not because he is tired, but because this is his natural mental trend. If he drums, twitches, and walks the floor, these movements are not always due to exhaustion, but are habits peculiar to the temperament, habits well worth an effort to eliminate while in health, since they doubtless, through precluding bodily repose, contribute their mite toward the very exhaustion of which they are supposed to be the result. If he cannot sleep it is not simply because he is tired, but because he is so constituted that he cannot bring himself to let go his hold on consciousness until he has straightened out his tangles. If, in addition, one has the hypochondriacal tendency, he may worry himself into complete wakefulness by the thought that he has already irreparably injured himself by missing something of the mystic number, eight or nine, or whatever he may deem the number of hours’ sleep essential to health.

It is important that the overwrought business or professional man realize the importance of undertaking no more than he can accomplish without fret and worry; the importance of taking proper vacations before he is tired out; the importance of learning to divert his mind, while he can still do so, into channels other than those connected with his business; above all, the importance of cultivating the faculty of relaxing, and of dismissing doubts, indecisions and fears. He must cultivate what my colleague Dr. Paul succinctly terms “the art of living with yourself as you are.” If he would “last out” he must learn to proceed with single mind upon whatever work he undertakes, and with equal singleness of mind apply himself, out of hours, to other occupation or diversion, preferably in the open air. For the most effective work, as well as for peace of mind, it is essential that every thought of one’s office be shut out by other interests when there is no actual business requiring attention. Mental relaxation is materially hampered by such persistent thoughts of one’s place of business as those cited by Dr. Knapp:

“A striking instance of the sort was related to me by a friend remarkably free from any psychopathic taint. It often happens that he does scientific work in the evening at the Agassiz Museum. When he leaves for the night he puts out the gas and then stands and counts slowly up to a given number until his eyes are used to the darkness, in order that he may detect any spark of fire that may have started while he was at work. This is his invariable custom, but it sometimes happens that when he goes back home so strong a feeling of doubt comes over him lest he may that once have omitted to do this, that he is uncomfortable until he returns to the museum to make sure.”

Among the predisposing causes for nervous breakdown none is more potent than the inability of the obsessive to adapt himself to change of plan, and to reconcile himself to criticism, opposition, and the various annoyances incident to his occupation.

In dealing with others the following suggestion of Marcus Aurelius may come in play:

“When a man has done thee any wrong, immediately consider with what opinion about good or evil he has done wrong. For when thou hast seen this, thou wilt pity him, and neither wonder nor be angry.” Again, in this connection the lines of Cowper are pertinent:

“The modest, sensible and well-bred man Will not affront me, and no other can.”

Pope, also, who is said not always to have followed his own good counsel, contributes a verse which may serve a turn:

“At ev’ry trifle scorn to take offense, That always shows great pride, or little sense.”

The practice of such commonplace philosophy (which, to be effective, should be ready for immediate use, not stored away for later reflection), together with training against faulty mental states studied in these pages, will go far toward relieving the mental perturbation that unfits for effective work, and contributes to “neurasthenia.”

During an hour’s delay, caused by the failure of another to keep an appointment, I formulated the following maxim:

“These are the annoyances incident to my business; to fret when they occur means that I cannot manage my business without friction.”

This may not appeal to the reader, but for me it has proved as good an hour’s work as I ever did. Since that time, on the occurrence of similar sources of provocation, I have found it necessary to go no farther than “These are the annoyances,” to restore the needful balance. When we allow our gorge to rise at ordinary sources of discomfort, it implies that we are prepared only for our affairs to run with perfect smoothness. This represents the insistent idea carried to an absurdity.

At the risk of losing caste with the critical I cannot forbear sharing with the reader an inelegant maxim which has more than once prevented an access of rage upon the blunder of a subordinate: “If he had our brains he’d have our job.”

Spinoza says: “The powerlessness of man to govern and restrain his emotions I call servitude. For a man who is controlled by his emotions is not his own master but is mastered by fortune, under whose power he is often compelled, though he sees the better, to follow the worse.” The same philosopher in counselling self-restraint adds:

“The mind’s power over the emotions consists, first, in the actual knowledge of the emotions.” Again: “An emotion which is a passion ceases to be a passion as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea of it.” The meaning of this dictum I first realized on experiencing the magical effect of the line of thought suggested by the delayed appointment.

 

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Communion with Nature has a peculiarly soothing effect on tired and jangled nerves. My friend, Dr. Harold Williams, tells me that among his main reliances for tired and overwrought women are the reading of children’s books, and working in the garden. Peterson thus advises his busy patient:

“A small farm in a simple community would be for you an asset of immeasurable value from the standpoint of health and spiritual rejuvenation. But true simplicity should be the rigorous order of that country life. A chateau by the sea, with a corps of gardeners, a retinue of servants, and yachts and automobiles, would prove a disastrous expedient.

“In that quiet retreat you should personally and tenderly learn to know each rosebud, shrub, vine, creeper, tree, rock, glade, dell, of your own estate. You should yourself design the planting, paths, roads, the flower-garden, the water-garden, the wood-garden, the fernery, the lily-pond, the wild-garden, and the kitchen garden.”

Not everyone is so happily situated as to be able to follow this advice in its entirety, but many can make a modest effort in this direction: the kitchen-garden may appeal to some who have no appreciation for the wild flowers, and who scorn to cultivate such tastes.

One warning is, however, here in order: The cultivation of the garden or the field for utilitarian purposes is inevitably associated with the maxim, “Hoe out your row”—an excellent maxim for the idle and disorderly, but not to be taken too literally by the over-exacting and methodical business man who is trying to make the radical change in his view of life necessary to free his mind from the incubus of worry. Nor must the amateur husbandman scan with too anxious eye the weather map and the clouds. If he mind these warnings he may learn to say,—

“For me kind Nature wakes her genial pow’r, Suckles each herb, and spreads out ev’ry flower, Annual for me, the grape, the rose renew, The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew.”

The over-conscientious individual may object that it is selfish to consider his own comfort when he has work to do for others. But expending too freely of our nervous energies, even in a good cause, is like giving to charity so much of our substance that we in turn are obliged to lean on others for support.

In properly conserving our own energy we may be lightening the ultimate burden of others. There is no place for selfishness in Haeckel’s philosophy regarding the proper balance between duty to one’s self and duty to others. Nor was selfishness a failing of the Quaker poet who idealized

“The flawless symmetry of man, The poise of heart and mind.”

 

IX.

SLEEPLESSNESS

He shall enjoy the same tranquility in his sleep as when awake.

Digby’s Epicurus, Maxim xl.

 

Sleeplessness is due, in the majority of cases, to a faulty habit of mind. The preparation for a sleepless night begins with the waking hours, is continued through the day, and reaches its maximum when we cease from the occupations which have in some degree diverted our attention from harassing thoughts, and retire, to struggle, in darkness and solitude, with the worries, doubts, regrets, and forebodings, which now assume gigantic and fantastic shapes.

He who would sleep at night must regulate his day, first, by not undertaking more than he can accomplish without undue stress, and, second, by carrying through what he does