War on Timidity : Part 1

Poise: How to Attain It
by D. Starke

(Page 3 of 11)

One can not be too insistent in asserting how harmful the lack of poise can be, and when once this weakness has reached the stage of timidity it may produce the most tragic consequences not only so far as the daily routine of our lives is concerned, but also with reference to our moral and physical equilibrium.

So, when the nervous system is constantly set on edge by the emotions to which this fault gives rise, it necessarily follows that all the faculties suffer in their turn.

This is particularly true of those who are constantly haunted by the fear of finding themselves in a condition of mental unpreparedness, to the extent that they prefer to remain in solitude and silence rather than to mingle in a world which really has too many other things to think of to concern itself with their acts or their opinions.

This morbid dread of becoming the subject of ridicule ends by creating a peculiar condition of mind of which, as we have already pointed out, egoism is the pivot.

In this way it is a common occurrence to see people of timidity paying exaggerated attention to the slightest changes in the condition of their health.

Such people by shutting themselves out from the world have reduced it to the circumference of their own personalities and everything which touches them necessarily assumes gigantic importance in their eyes.

The slightest opposition becomes for them a catastrophe. The smallest unpleasantness presents itself to them in the light of a tragic misfortune.

For this reason the lives of the timid become a succession of boredoms and of pains.

Even in those cases where no really unfortunate incident occurs, these people so exaggerate what actually does happen to them that the least little emotion causes them the most profound unhappiness.

On those days when nothing in particular happens they spend their time anticipating all sorts of disasters, including those which are not the least likely to happen. To them the tiniest cloud is an omen of a devastating storm.

When the sun is shining their timidity prevents them from exposing themselves to the heat of its rays.

The timid man, in his moral isolation, is like the hare, who, crouched in its form, sleeps with one eye open in constant terror of the passer-by or of the hunter.

It may be well to add that worry about oneself is invariably an accompaniment of all these troubles. People without poise are, with very few exceptions, egotists who exaggerate their own importance.

Moreover, they suffer keenly from the obscurity into which their defects have forced them as well as from dread of the alternatives presented to them, the making of an effort to escape this fate, an idea that fills them with horror, or the continuing to live in the unhappy condition that has spoiled existence for them through their own faults.

It is hardly then a matter for surprize that so many people who are thus mentally out of balance end by becoming neurotics or become a prey to those cerebral disorders that are, unfortunately, all too frequent.

This condition of solitude, at once deplored and self-imposed, has the still more serious disadvantage of leaving the mind, for lack of proper control, to the domination of the most false and exaggerated ideas.

It is a well-known fact that any force of exaggeration, however obvious, becomes less noticeable to us in proportion as it becomes more familiar.

It exists, in the last analysis, only by its comparative relation to other things.

It is certain that a child ten years old would seem very large if he were five feet high, whereas a man of that stature is considered a dwarf.

Among Oriental races a woman is generally classed as a blonde whose hair is not absolutely black.

Things only take their real appearance from a comparison with others of the same kind.

For all his science, an ethnologist, placed in front of a man of an unknown tribe, would be unable to say whether this man's stature were normal or below the average in relation to others of his race, since no information would be forthcoming as to this people's height or characteristics. It is, therefore, no matter for surprize that the timid man, shut in upon himself and having no other horizon than the limited field of his own observations, is disposed to picture them in colors whose truth he can not verify, since the terms of comparison, vital to the accomplishment of his end, are not available to him.

Translated By Francis Medhurst, D.Litt.
Authorized Edition
1916