A BLESSED PRIVILEGE
She was a very motherly woman of about fifty years of age who had been coming to me for treatment on account of nervousness. She was getting along nicely, although she had only been under my care for about a week, when one day she came into the office all flustrated and in a highly excited state of mind.
In explaining the cause of her condition she said she was afraid that all the good work we had done had gone for naught and that there was no hope for her whatever. This was because her husband’s sister, who lived in one of the small up-State towns, had arrived the night before for a three weeks’ visit and that while sheloved her sister-in-law very much, yet they never got on very well together and this visit meant three weeks of untold misery in trying to please her visitor. She then unloaded into my ears a tale of woe which took her half an hour to relate although she talked as fast as her tongue could rattle it off. I sat back in my chair and listened quietly until she finished her list of complaints and I do not think she omitted a single one of them.
Although my patient was a dear woman and would not intentionally hurt the feelings of any one—she would much rather suffer herself than to do that—yet I saw plainly that her attitude towards this visit of her sister-in-law had brought her to a condition where she would have an attack of hysteria did it continue. The word picture she painted of the previous visits and the miserable times she had on those occasions would have caused almost any one tobelieve that the sister-in-law was a demon incarnate masquerading as a human being, instead of being only an ordinary average woman living in the country and who delighted in the freedom and the fascinating sights of a large city.
When my patient had finished her story of condemnation, criticism and complaints, I said: “Is that all?”
“Well, isn’t it enough?” she answered.
I told her that I thought it was and then asked whether she wished to have the same kind of experiences again this time.
“Of course not, but how can I help it?” she replied. “My sister-in-law is here and what she has done before she will do again, and what am I to do?”
“Quit building in your thought world for a repetition of these experiences and begin to build for what you want instead,” I answered, “for as long as you continue to take the attitudeyou have always heretofore taken towards these visits of your sister-in-law, and towards what she says and does; as long as you continue to set the causes in motion which will produce these inharmonious and destructive effects, just so long will you continue to be miserable and unhappy every time your visitor comes to see you. YOU, however, can changeallof these conditions and effects bychanging your attitude towards them, provided you have thereal wantto do this.”
“Oh, doctor,” she said, “I will do anything in the world that is possible for me to do, in order to get rid of all the misery which these visits have caused me in the past.”
“Then promise me,” I said, “that you will follow my instructions and I will guarantee that by the time the three weeks’ visit is up you will tell me they have been the happiest three weeks of your life.”
“Oh, could I only believe that would be possible, doctor,” she said, “I would be so happy.”
“I do not ask you to believe,” I replied, “but I do ask you to follow my instructions implicitly, for I know what the results will be even though you do not know at the present time.”
I told her the first thing she should do was to forget her own little, petty, personal self with all of its criticisms, condemnations and self-pity; take her hands off her sister-in-law’s life and permit her to enjoy herself asshe(the sister-in-law) wanted and that she herself was to turn in and do everything possible to make the visit a most pleasant one and to give her visitor the “time of her life.” She was to remember that her sister-in-law lived in a small town and the visit to New York once a year was a big event in her life; one which she planned for and talked about for months before she came, living in the pleasure of its anticipationand reveling in the joys of it after her return home. The theaters, churches, shops, big department stores, the crowds of people, the illuminations on Broadway were never ending objects of interest to one who only saw them occasionally. That heretofore she (my patient) had only thought of herself, the extra work, care and bother of having some one around who disturbed her home life, and that the time she had spent in entertaining her visitor had been the worst kind of drudgery to her because she had become satiated with these things and only went with her visitor because it was her “duty” to do so. She should plan to go with her visitor wherever the latter wished to go and do the things her visitor wanted to do, not as a “duty” she owed to the sister of her husband, as had been the case heretofore, butdo it as a “blessed privilege”; do it because she herself enjoyed giving her visitor a good time; do itbecause she derived the greatest pleasure in doing it; do it because she got so much fun, pleasure and enjoyment out of seeing her sister-in-law have such a good time that she would rather do it than not.
I told her that when we did anything from the plane of consciousness where it was our “duty” to do it, that it lost its constructive effect, for no matter how pleasant we might seem to be on the outside there was always the inner resentment and resistance in our consciousness because we felt that we justhadto do it on account of its being our “duty,” but that when we changed our inner state of consciousness through changing our attitude towards a thing and made it our “blessed privilege” instead of our “duty” to do it, then the whole thing changed and what had been before drudgery and difficult to do, became in fact a joy and pleasure.
Objectively she was not necessarily to do anything different in entertaining her visitor than she had always done before butshe was to do it with an entirely different consciousness, a different thought back of it, a different purpose or motive. She was to make it her “blessed privilege” to have her sister-in-law here with her and was to take advantage of the opportunity to give her the very best time possible, and that this change of attitude on her part would work such a transformation in her as to seem miraculous in its results.
She promised faithfully to follow my instructions and about a week later she came into the office with her face wreathed in smiles and eyes shining with joy and gladness. “Oh doctor,” she said, “I could not wait any longer to see you. I just had to come and tell you how wonderful it all is. Why last night my sister-in-law put her arms around my neck and kissedme (something she had never done before in her life) and said she never knew before how dear I was. Everything and even more than you promised has come true and I never was so happy before in all my life, and it is my ‘blessed privilege’ to tell you this. I cannot thank you for words are too inadequate to express my gratitude for what you have taught me.”