Causes of Worry : Part 4

Quit Your Worrying!
by George Wharton James

(Page 10 of 25)

What, then, should be the mental attitude of the superintendent and his family? Ought they not to be worried? I got the answer for my readers from this man, and it is so perfectly in accord with my own principles that I find great pleasure in recording it. Said he:

Don't think for one moment that I minimize the possible danger. The asylum physician who was familiar with the whole circumstances warned me not to rest in fancied security. I have notified the proper officials that the man who attempted to murder me is not to be released either as cured or on parole without giving me sufficient notice. I do not wish that he should be kept in the asylum a single day longer than is fully necessary, but before I allow him to be released I must be thoroughly satisfied that he has no murderous designs on me, and that he is truly and satisfactorily repentant for the attack he made when, ostensibly, he was mentally irresponsible. I shall require that he be put on record as fully understanding and appreciating his own personal responsibility for my safety - so that should he still hold any wrongful designs, and afterwards succeed in carrying them out, he or his attorneys will be debarred from again pleading insanity or mental incompetency.

Hence while I fully realize the possibility of danger I do not have a moment's worry about it. I have done and shall do all I can, satisfactorily, to protect myself, without any feeling of harshness or desire to injure the poor fellow, and there I let the matter rest to take care of itself.

This is practical wisdom. This is sane philosophy. Not ignoring the danger, pooh-pooing it, scoffing at it and refusing to recognize it, but calmly, sanely, with a kindly heart looking at possible contingencies, preparing for them, and then serenely trusting to the spiritual forces of life to control events to a wise and satisfactory issue.

Can you suggest anything better? Is not such a course immeasurably better than to allow himself to worry, and fret and fear all the time? Practical precaution, taken without enmity - note these italicized words - trustful serenity, faithful performance of present duty unhampered by fears and worries - this is the rational, normal, philosophic, sane course to follow.

Another great source of worry is our failure to distinguish essentials from non-essentials. What are the essentials for life? For a man, honesty, truth, earnestness, strength, health, ability to work, and work to do. He may or may not be handsome; he may or may not have wealth, position, fame, education; but to be a man among men, these other things he must have. For a woman, - health, love, work, and such virtues as both men and women need. She might enjoy friends, but they are not essential as health or work; she would be a strange woman if she did not prize beauty, but devoted love is worth far more than beauty or all the conquests it brings. What is the essential for a chair? - its capacity to be used to sit upon with comfort. A house? - that it is adapted to the making of a home. You don't buy a printing-press to curl your hair with but to print, and in accordance with its printing power is it judged. A boat's usefulness is determined by its worthiness in the water, to carry safely, rapidly, largely as is demanded of it.

This is the judgement sanity demands of everything. What is essential - What not? Is it essential to be a society leader, to belong to every club, to hold office, to give as many dinners as one's neighbors, to have a bigger house, furniture with brighter polish, bigger carvings and more ugly designs than anyone else in town, to have our names in the papers oftener than others, to have more servants, a newer style automobile, put on more show, pomp, ceremony and circumstance than our friends?

By no means! Oh for men and women who have the discerning power - the sight for the essential things, the determination to have them and let non-essentials go. They are the wise ones, the happy ones, the free-from-worry ones.

Later I shall refer extensively to Mrs. Canfield's book The Squirrel Cage. She has many wise utterances on this phase of the worry question. For instance, in referring to the mad race for wealth and position that keeps a man away from home so many hours of the day that his wife and child scarce know him she introduces the following dialogue:

One of them whose house isn't far from mine, told me that he hadn't seen his children, except asleep, for three weeks.

'But something ought to be done about it!' The girl's deep-lying instinct for instant reparation rose up hotly.

'Are they so much worse off than most American business men?' queried Rankin. 'Do any of them feel they can take the time to see much more than the outside of their children; and isn't seeing them asleep about as - '

Lydia cut him short quickly. 'You're always blaming them for that,' she cried. 'You ought to pity them. They can't help it. It's better for the children to have bread and butter, isn't it - '

Rankin shook his head. 'I can't be fooled with that sort of talk - I've lived with too many kinds of people. At least half the time it is not a question of bread and butter. It's a question of giving the children bread and butter and sugar rather than bread and butter and father. Of course, I'm a fanatic on the subject. I'd rather leave off even the butter than the father - let alone the sugar.'

Later on Lydia herself lost her father and after his death her own wail was: 'I never lived with my father. He was always away in the morning before I was up. I was away, or busy, in the evening when he was there. On Sundays he never went to church as mother and I did - I suppose now because he had some other religion of his own. But if he had I never knew what it was - or anything else that was in his mind or heart. It never occurred to me that I could. He tried to love me - I remember so many times now - and that makes me cry! - how he tried to love me! He was so glad to see me when I got home from Europe - but he never knew anything that happened to me. I told you once before that when I had pneumonia and nearly died mother kept it from him because he was on a big case. It was all like that - always. He never knew.'

About the Author

George Wharton James (1858 - 1923) was a prolific popular lecturer and journalist, writing more than 40 books and many articles and pamphlets on California and the American Southwest. James was born in Lincolnshire, England. He was ordained as a Methodist minister and came to the United States in 1881, serving in parishes in Nevada and southern California.