"TOMMY, don't do that. You know it annoys your grandfather."
"Well, why should he be annoyed? I am doing nothing wrong."
"I know that, and it hurts me to ask you, but you know how he will feel if he sees you doing it, and you know that troubles me."
Reluctantly and sullenly Tommy stopped. Tommy's mother looked strained and worried and discontented. Tommy had an expression on his face akin to that of a smouldering volcano.
If any one had taken a good look at the grandfather it would have been very clear that Tommy was his own grandson, and that the old man and the child were acting and reacting upon one another in a way that was harmful to both; although the injury was, of course, worse to the child, for the grandfather had toughened. The grandfather thought he loved his little grandson, and the grandson, at times, would not have acknowledged that he did not love his grandfather. At other times, with childish frankness, he said he "hated him."
But the worst of this situation was that although the mother loved her son, and loved her father, and sincerely thought that she was the family peacemaker, she was all the time fanning the antagonism.
Here is a contrast to this little story An old uncle came into the family of his nephew to live, late in life, and with a record behind him of whims and crotchets in the extreme. The father and mother talked it over. Uncle James must come. He had lost all his money. There was no one else to look after him and they could not afford to support him elsewhere where he would be comfortable. They took it into account, without offence, that it was probably just as much a cross to Uncle James to come as it was to them to have him. They took no pose of magnanimity such as: "Of course we must be good and offer Uncle James a home," and "How good we are to do it!" Uncle James was to come because it was the only thing for him to do. The necessity was to be faced and fought and conquered, and they had three strong, self-willed little children to face it with them. They had sense enough to see that if faced rightly it would do only good to the children, but if made a burden to groan over it would make their home a "hornets' nest." They agreed to say nothing to the children about Uncle James's peculiarities, but to await developments.
Children are always delighted at a visit from a relative, and they welcomed their great-uncle with pleasure. It was not three days, however, before every one of the three was crying with dislike and hurt feelings and anger. Then was the time to begin the campaign.
The mother, with a happy face, called the three children to her, and said "Now listen, children. Do you suppose I like Uncle James's irritability any better than you do?"
"No," came in a chorus; "we don't see how you stand it, Mother."
Then she said: "Now look here, boys, do you suppose that Uncle James likes his snapping any better than we do?"
"If he does not like it why does he do it?" answered the boys.
"I cannot tell you that; that is his business and not yours or mine," said the mother; "but I can prove to you that he does not like it. Bobby, do you remember how you snapped at your brother yesterday, when he accidentally knocked your house over?"
"Yes!" replied Bobby.
"Did you feel comfortable after it?" "You bet I didn't," was the quick reply.
"Well," answered the mother, "you boys stop and think just how disagreeable it is inside of you when you snap, and then think how it would be if you had to feel like that as much as Uncle James does."
"By golly, but that would be bad," said the twelve-year-old.
"Now, boys," went on the mother, "you want to relieve Uncle James's disagreeable feelings all you can, and don't you see that you increase them when you do things to annoy him? His snappish feelings are just like a sore that is smarting and aching all the time, and when you get in their way it hurts as if you rubbed the sore. Keep out of his way when you can, and when you can't and he snaps at you, say: 'I beg your pardon, sir,' like gentlemen, and stop doing what annoys him; or get out of his way as soon as you can."
Uncle James never became less snappish. But the upright, manly courtesy of those boys toward him was like fresh air on a mountain, especially because it had become a habit and was all as a matter of course. The father and mother realized that Uncle James had, unconsciously, made men of their boys as nothing else in the world could have done, and had trained them so that they would grow up tolerant and courteous toward all human peculiarities.
Many times a gracious courtesy toward the "trying member" will discover good and helpful qualities that we had not guessed before. Sometimes after a little honest effort we find that it is ourselves who have been the trying members, and that the other one has been the member tried. Often it is from two members of the family that the trying element comes. Two sisters may clash, and they will generally clash because they are unlike. Suppose one sister moves and lives in big swings, and the other in minute details. Of course when these extreme tendencies are accented in each the selfish temptation is for the larger mind to lapse into carelessness of details, and for the smaller mind to shrink into pettiness, and as this process continues the sisters get more and more intolerant of each other, and farther and farther apart. But if the sister who moves in the big swings will learn from the other to be careful in details, and if the smaller mind will allow itself to be enlarged by learning from the habitually broader view of the other, each will grow in proportion, and two women who began life as enemies in temperament can end it as happy friends.
There are similar cases of brothers who clash, but they are not so evident, for when men do not agree they leave one another alone. Women do not seem to be able to do that. It is good to leave one another alone when there is the clashing tendency, but it is better to conquer the clashing and learn to agree.
So long as the normal course of my life leads me to live with some one who rubs me the wrong way I am not free until I have learned to live with that some one in quiet content. I never gain my freedom by running away. The bondage is in me always, so long as the other person's presence can rouse it. The only way is to fight it out inside of one's self. When we can get the co-operation of the other so much the better. But no one's co-operation is necessary for us to find our own freedom, and with it an intelligent, tolerant kindliness.
"Mother, you take that seat. No, not that one, Mother—the sun comes in that window. Children, move aside and let your grandmother get to her seat."
The young woman was very much in earnest in seeing that her mother had a comfortable seat, that she had not the discomfort of the hot sun, that the children made way for her so that she could move into her seat comfortably. All her words were thoughtful and courteous, but the spirit and the tone of her words were quite the reverse of courteous. If some listener with his eyes shut had heard the tone without understanding the words he might easily have thought that the woman was talking to a little dog.
Poor "Mother" trotted into her seat with the air of a little dog who was so well trained that he did at once what his mistress ordered. It was very evident that "Mother's" will had been squeezed out of her and trampled upon for years by her dutiful daughter, who looked out always that "Mother" had the best, without the first scrap of respect for "Mother's" free, human soul.
The grandchildren took the spirit of their mother's words rather than the words themselves, and treated their grandmother as if she were a sort of traveling idiot tagged on to them, to whom they had to be decently respectful whenever their mother's eye was upon them, and whom they ignored entirely when their mother looked the other way.
It so happened that I was sitting next to this particular mother who had been poked into a comfortable seat by her careful daughter. And, after a number of other suggestions had been poked at her with a view to adding to her comfort, she turned to me and in a quaint, confidential way, with the gentle voice of a habitual martyr, and at the same time a twinkle of humor in her eye, she said "They think, you know, I don't know anything."
And after that we had a little talk about matters of the day which proved to me that "Mother" had a mind broader and certainly more quiet than her daughter. I studied the daughter with interest after knowing "Mother" better, and her habitual strain of voice and manner were pathetic. By making a care of her mother instead of a companion, she was not only guilty of disrespect to a soul which, however weak it may have been in allowing itself to be directed in all minor matters, had its own firm principles which were not overridden nor even disturbed by the daughter's dominance. If the daughter had only dropped her strain of care and her habit of "bossing" she would have found a true companion in her mother, and would have been a healthier and happier woman herself.
In pleasant contrast to this is the story of a family which had an old father who had lost his mind entirely, and had grown decrepit and childish in the extreme. The sons and daughters tended him like a baby and loved him with gentle, tender respect. There was no embarrassment for his loss of mind, no thought of being distressed or pained by it, and because his children took their father's state so quietly and without shame, every guest who came took it in the same way, and there was no thought of keeping the father out of sight. He sat in the living-room in his comfortable chair, and always one child or another was sitting right beside him with a smiling face. Instead of being a trying member of the family, as happens in so many cases, this old father seemed to bring content and rest to his children through their loving care for him.
Very often—I might almost say always—the trying member of the family is trying only because we make her so by our attitude toward her, let her be grandmother, mother, or maiden aunt. Even the proverbial mother-in-law grows less difficult as our attitude toward her is relieved of the strain of detesting everything she does, and expecting to detest everything that she is going to do. With every trying friend we have, if we yield to him in all minor matters we find the settling of essential questions wonderfully less difficult.
A son had a temper and the girl he married had a temper. The mother loved her son with the selfish love with which so many mothers burden their children, and thought that he alone of all men had a right to lose his temper. Consequently she excused her son and blamed her daughter-in-law. If there were a mild cyclone roused between the two married people the son would turn to his mother to hear what a martyr he was and what misfortune he had to bear in having been so easily mistaken in the woman he married. Thus the mother-in-law, who felt that she was protecting her poor son, was really breeding dissension between two people who could have been the best possible friends all their lives.
The young wife very soon became ashamed of her temper and worked until she conquered it, but it was not until her mother-in-law had been out of this world for years that her husband discovered what he had lost in turning away from his wife's friendship, and it was only by the happy accident of severe illness that he ever discovered his mistake at all, and gained freedom from the bondage of his own temper enough to appreciate his wife.
If, however, the wife had yielded in the beginning not only to her husband's bad temper but also to the antagonism of her mother-in-law, which was, of course, annoying in many petty ways, she might have gained her husband's friendship, and it is possible that she might, moreover, have gained the friendship of her mother-in-law.
The best rule with regard to all trying members of the family is to yield to them always in non-essentials; and when you disagree in essentials stick to the principle which you believe to be right, but stick to it without resistance. Believe your way, but make yourself willing that the trying member should believe her way. Make an opportunity of what appears to be a limitation, and, believe me, your trying member can become a blessing to you.
I go further than that—I truly believe that to make the best of life every family should have a trying member. When we have no trying member of our family, and life goes along smoothly, as a matter of course, the harmony is very liable to be spurious, and a sudden test will all at once knock such a family into discord, much to the surprise of every member. When we go through discord to harmony, and once get into step, we are very likely to keep in step:
Be willing, then, make yourself willing, that the trying member should be in the way. Hope that she will stay in your family until you have succeeded in dropping not only all resistance to her being there, but every resistance to her various ways in detail. Bring her annoying ways up to your mind voluntarily when you are away from her. If you do that you will find all the resistances come with them and you can relax out of the strain then and there. You will find that when you get home or come down to breakfast in the morning (for many resistances are voluntarily thrown off in the night) you will have a pleasanter feeling toward the trying member, and it comes so spontaneously that you will be surprised yourself at the absence of the strain of resistance in you.
Believe me when I say this: the yielding in the non-essentials, singularly enough, gives one strength to refuse to yield in principles. But we must always remember that if we want to find real peace, while we refuse to yield in our own principles so long as we believe them to be true, we must be entirely willing that others should differ from us in belief.
SUPPOSE your husband got impatient and annoyed with you because you did not seem to enter heartily into the interests of his work and sympathize with its cares and responsibilities and soothe him out of the nervous harassments. Would you not perhaps feel a little sore that he seemed to expect all from you and to give nothing in return? I know how many women will say that is all very well, but the husband and father should feel as much interest in the home and the children as the wife and mother does. That is, of course, true up to a certain point, always in general, and when his help is really necessary in particular. But a man cannot enter into the details of his wife's duties at home any more than a woman can enter into the details of her husband's duties at his office.
Then, again, my readers may say: "But a woman's nervous system is more sensitive than a man's; she needs help and consolation. She needs to have some one on whom she can lean." Now the answer to that will probably be surprising, but an intelligent understanding and comprehension of it would make a very radical difference in the lives of many men and women who have agreed to live together for life—for better and for worse.
Now the truth is man's nervous system is quite as sensitive as a woman's, but the woman's temptation to emotion makes her appear more sensitive, and her failure to control her emotions ultimately increases the sensitiveness of her nerves so that they are more abnormal than her husband's. Even that is not always true The other day a woman sat in tears and distress telling of the hardness of heart, the restlessness, the irritability, the thoughtlessness, the unkindness of her husband. Her face was drawn with suffering. She insisted that she was not complaining, that it was her deep and tender love for her husband that made her suffer so. "But it is killing me, it is killing me," she said, and one who saw her could well believe it. And if the distress and the great strain upon her nerves had kept on it certainly would have made her ill, if not have actually ended her life with a nervous collapse.
The friend in whom she confided sat quietly and heard her through. She let her pour herself out to the very finish until she stopped because there was nothing more to say. Then, by means of a series of gentle, well-adapted questions, she drew from the wife a recognition—for the first time—of the fact that she really did nothing whatever for her husband and expected him to do everything for her. Perhaps she put on a pretty dress for him in order to look attractive when he came home, but if he did not notice how well she looked, and was irritable about something in the house, she would be dissolved in tears because she had not proved attractive and pleased him. Maybe she had tried to have a dinner that he especially liked; then if he did not notice the food, and seemed distracted about something that was worrying him, she would again be dissolved in tears because he "appreciated nothing that she tried to do for him."
Now it is perfectly true that this husband was irritable and brutal; he had no more consideration for his wife than he had for any one else. But his wife was doing all in her power to fan his irritability into flame and to increase his brutality. She was attitudinizing in her own mind as a martyr. She was demanding kindness and attention and sympathy from her husband, and because she demanded it she never got it.
A woman can demand without demanding imperiously. There is more selfish demanding in a woman's emotional suffering because her husband does not do this or that or the other for her sake than there is in a tornado of man's irritability or anger. You see, a woman's demanding spirit is covered with the mush of her emotions. A man's demanding spirit stands out in all its naked ugliness. One is just as bad as the other. One is just as repulsive as the other.
It is a radical, practical impossibility to bring loving-kindness out of any one by demanding it. Loving-kindness, thoughtfulness, and consideration have got to be born spontaneously in a man's own mind to be anything at all, and no amount of demanding on the part of his wife can force it.
When this little lady of whom I have been writing found that she had been demanding from her husband what he really ought to have given her as a matter of course, and that she had used up all her strength in suffering because he did not give it, and had used none of her strength in the effort to be patient and quiet in waiting for him to come to his senses, she went home and began a new life. She was a plucky little woman and very intelligent when once her eyes were opened. She recognized the fact that her suffering was resistance to her husband's irritable selfishness, and she stopped resisting.
It was a long and hard struggle of days, weeks, and months, but it brought a very happy reward. When a man is irritable and ugly, and his wife offers no resistance either in anger or suffering, the irritability and ugliness react upon himself, and if there is something better in him he begins to perceive the irritability in its true colors. That is what happened to this man. As his wife stopped demanding he began to give. As his wife's nerves became calm and quiet his nerves quieted and calmed. Finally his wife discovered that much of his irritability had been roused through nervous anxiety in regard to his business about which he had told her nothing whatever because it "was not his way."
There is nothing in the world that so strengthens nerves as the steady use of the will to drop resistance and useless emotions and get a quiet control. This woman gained that strength, and to her surprise one day her husband turned to her with a full account of all his business troubles and she met his mind quietly, as one business man might meet another, and without in the least expressing her pleasure or her surprise. She took all the good change in him as a matter of course.
Finally one day it came naturally and easily to talk over the past. She found that her husband from day to day had dreaded coming home. The truth was that he had dreaded his own irritability as much as he had dreaded her emotional demanding. But he did not know it—he did not know what was the matter at all. He simply knew vaguely that he was a brute, that he felt like a brute, and that he did not know how to stop being a brute. His wife knew that he was a brute, and at the same time she felt throughly convinced that she was a suffering martyr. He was dreading to come home and she was dreading to have him come home—and there they were in a continuous nightmare. Now they have left the nightmare far, far behind, and each one knows that the other has one good friend in the world in whom he or she can feel entire confidence, and their friendship is growing stronger and clearer and more normal every day.
It is not the ceremony that makes the marriage: the ceremony only begins it. Marriage is a slow and careful adjustment. A true story which illustrates the opposite of this condition is that of a man and woman who were to all appearances happily married for years. They were apparently the very closest friends. The man's nerves were excitable and peculiar, and his wife adjusted herself to them by indulging them and working in every way to save him from friction. No woman could stand that constant work of adjustment which was in reality maladjustment, and this wife's nerves broke down unexpectedly and completely.
When our nerves get weak we are unable to repress resistance which in a stronger state we had covered up. This wife, while she had indulged and protected her husband's peculiarities, had subconsciously resisted them. When she became ill her subconscious resistance came to the surface. She surprised herself by growing impatient with her husband. He, of course; retorted. As she grew worse he did not find his usual comfort from her care, and instead of trying to help her to get well he turned his back on her and complained to another woman. Finally the friction of the two nervous systems became dangerously intense. Each was equally obstinate, and there was nothing to do but to separate The woman died of a broken heart, and the man is probably insane for the rest of his life.
It was nothing but the mismanagement of their own and each other's nerves that made all this terrible trouble. Their love seemed genuine at first, and could certainly have grown to be really genuine if they had become truly adjusted. And the saddest part of the whole story is that they were both peculiarly adapted to be of use to their fellow-men. During the first years of their life their home was a delight to all their friends.
Tired nerves are likely to close up a man or make him irritable, complaining, and ugly, whereas the tendency in a woman is to be irritable, complaining, and tearful. Now of course when each one is selfishly looking out for his or her comfort neither one can be expected to understand the other. The man thinks he is entirely justified in being annoyed with the woman's tearful, irritable complaints, and so he is—in a way. The woman thinks that she has a right to suffer because of her husband's irritable ugliness, and so she has—in a way. But in the truest way, and the way which appeals to every one's common sense, neither one has a right to complain of the other, and each one by right should have first made things better and clearer in himself and herself.
Human nature is not so bad—really in its essence it is not bad at all. If we only give the other man a real chance. It is the pushing and pulling and demanding of one human being toward another that smother the best in us, and make life a fearful strain. Of course there is a healthy demanding as well as an unhealthy demanding, but, so far as I know, the healthy demanding can come only when we are clear of personal resistance and can demand on the strength of a true principle and without selfish emotion. There is a kind of gentle, motherly contempt with which some women speak of their husbands, which must get on a man's nerves very painfully. It is intensely and most acutely annoying. And yet I have heard good women speak in that way over and over again. The gentleness and motherliness are of course neither of them real in such cases. The gentle, motherly tone is used to cover up their own sense of superiority.
"Poor boy, poor boy," they may say; "a man is really like a child." So he may be—so he often is childish, and sometimes childish in the extreme. But where could you find greater and more abject childishness than in a woman's ungoverned emotions?
A woman must respect the manliness of her husband's soul, and must cling to her belief in its living existence behind any amount of selfish, restless irritability, if she is going to find a friend in him or be a friend to him. She must also know that his nervous system may be just as sensitive as hers. Sometimes it is more sensitive, and should be accordingly respected. Demand nothing and expect nothing, but hold him to his best in your mind and wait.
That is a rule that would work wonderfully if every woman who is puzzled about her husband's restlessness and lack of interest in home affairs would apply it steadily and for long enough. It is impossible to manufacture a happy, sympathetic married life artificially—impossible! But as each one looks to one's self and does one's part fully, and then is willing to wait for the other, the happiness and the sympathy, the better power for work and the joyful ability to play come—they do come; they are real and alive and waiting for us as we get clear from the interferences.
"Why doesn't my husband like to stay with me when he comes home? Why can't we have nice, cozy times together?" a wife asks with sad longing in her eyes.
And to the same friend the husband (who is, by the way, something of a pig) says: "I should be glad to stay with Nellie often in the evening, but she will always talk about her worries, and she worries about the family in a way that is idiotic. She is always sure that George will catch the measles because a boy in the next street has them, and she is always sure that our children do not have the advantages nor the good manners that other children have. If it is not one thing it is another; whenever we are alone there is something to complain of, and her last complaint was about her own selfishness." Then he laughed at what he considered a good joke, and in five minutes had forgotten all about her.
This wife, in a weak, selfish little way, was trying to give her husband her confidence, and her complaint about her own selfishness was genuine. She wanted his help to get out of it. If he had given her just a little gracious attention and told her how impossible it was really to discuss the children when she began the conversation with whining complaint, she would have allowed herself to be taught and their intercourse would have improved. On the other hand, if the wife had realized that her husband came home from the cares of his business tired and nervous, and if she had talked lightly and easily on general subjects and tried to follow his interests, when his nerves were rested and quiet she might have found him ready and able to give her a little lift with regard to the children.
It is interesting and it is delightful to see how, as we each work first to bear our own burdens, we not only find ourselves ready and able to lighten the burdens of others but find others who are helpful to us.
A woman who finds her husband "so restless and irritable" should remember that in reality a man's nervous system is just as sensitive as a woman's, and, with a steady and consistent effort to bear her own burdens and to work out her own problems, should prepare herself to lighten her husband's burdens and help to solve his problems; that is the truest way of bringing him to the place where he will be glad to share her burdens with her as well as his own.
But we want to remember that there is a radical difference between indulging another's selfishness, and waiting, with patient yielding, for him to discover his selfishness himself, and to act unselfishly from his own free will.
SOME women live in a chronic state of excitement all the time and they do not find it out until they get ill. Even then they do not always find it out, and then they get more ill.
It is really much the same with excitable women as with a man who thinks he must always keep a little stimulant in himself in order to keep about his work. When a bad habit is established in us we feel unnatural if we give the habit up for a moment—and we feel natural when we are in it—but it is poison all the same.
If a woman has a habit of constantly snuffing or clearing her throat, or rocking a rocking chair, or chattering to whoever may be near her she would feel unnatural and weird if she were suddenly wrenched out of any of these things. And yet the poisoning process goes on just the same.
When it seems immaterial to us that we should be natural we are in a pretty bad way and the worst of it is we do not know it.
I once took a friend with me into the country who was one of those women who lived on excitement in every-day life. When she dressed in the morning she dressed in excitement. She went down to breakfast in excitement. She went about the most humdrum everyday affairs excited. Every event in life—little or big—was an excitement to her—and she went to bed tired out with excitement—over nothing.
We went deep in the woods and in the mountains, full of great powerful quiet.
When my friend first got there she was excited about her arrival, she was excited about the house and the people in it, but in the middle of the night she jumped up in bed with a groan of torture.
I thought she had been suddenly taken ill and started up quickly from my end of the room to see what was the trouble.
"Oh, oh," she groaned, "the quiet! It is so quiet!" Her brain which had been in a whirl of petty excitement felt keen pain when the normal quiet touched it.
Fortunately this woman had common sense and I could gradually explain the truth to her, and she acted upon it and got rested and strong and quiet.
I knew another woman who had been wearing shoes that were too tight for her and that pinched her toes all together. The first time she wore shoes that gave her feet room enough the muscles of her feet hurt her so that she could hardly walk.
Of course, having been cramped into abnormal contraction the process of expanding to freedom would be painful.
If you had held your fist clenched tight for years, or months, or even weeks, how it would hurt to open it so that you could have free use of your fingers.
The same truth holds good with a fist that has been clenched, a foot that has been pinched, or a brain that has been contracted with excitement.
The process leading from the abnormal to the normal is always a painful one. To stay in the abnormal means blindness, constantly limiting power and death.
To come out into a normal atmosphere and into a normal way of living means clearer sight, constantly increasing power, and fresh life.
This habit of excitement is not only contracting to the brain; it has its effect over the whole body. If there is any organ that is weaker than any other the excitement eventually shows itself. A woman may be suffering from indigestion, or she may be running up large doctor's bills because of either one of a dozen other organic disturbances, with no suspicion that the cause of the whole trouble is that the noisy, excited, strained habits of her life have robbed her body of the vitality it needed to keep it in good running order.
As if an engineer threw his coal all over the road and having no fuel for his engine wondered that it would not run. Stupid women we are—most of us!
The trouble is that many of us are so deeply immersed in the habit of excitement that we do not know it.
It is a healthy thing to test ourselves and to really try to find ourselves out. It is not only healthy; it is deeply interesting.
If quiet of the woods, or, any other quiet place, makes us fidgety, we may be sure that our own state is abnormal and we had better go into the woods as often as possible until we feel ourselves to be a part of the quiet there.
If we go into the woods and get soothed and quieted and then come out and get fussed up and excited so that we feel painfully the contrast between the quiet and our every-day life, then we can know that we are living in the habit of abnormal excitement and we can set to work to stop it.
"That is all very well," I hear my readers say, "but how are you going to stop living in abnormal excitement when every circumstance and every person about you is full of it and knows nothing else?"
If you really want to do it and would feel interested to make persistent effort I can give you the recipe and I can promise any woman that if she perseveres until she has found the way she will never cease to be grateful.
If you start with the intention of taking the five minutes' search for quiet every day, do not let your intention be weakened or yourself discouraged if for some days you see no result at all.
At first it may be that whatever quiet you find will seem so strange that it will annoy you or make you very nervous, but if you persist and work right through, the reward will be worth the pains many times over.
Sometimes quieting our minds helps us to quiet our bodies; sometimes we must quiet our bodies first before we can find the way to a really quiet mind. The attention of the mind to quiet the body, of course, reacts back on to the mind, and from there we can pass on to thinking quietly. Each individual must judge for herself as to the best way of reaching the quiet. I will give several recipes and you can take your choice.
First, to quiet the body:—
1. Lie still and see how quietly you can breathe.
2. Sit still and let your head droop very slowly forward until finally it hangs down with its whole weight. Then lift it up very, very slowly and feel as if you pushed it all the way up from the lower part of your spine, or, better still, as if it grew up, so that you feel the slow, creeping, soothing motion all the way up your spine while your head is coming up, and do not let your head come to an entirely erect position until your chest is as high as you can hold it comfortably. When your head is erect take a long, quiet breath and drop it again. You can probably drop it and raise it twice in the five minutes. Later on it should take the whole five minutes to drop it and raise it once and an extra two minutes for the long breath.
When you have dropped your head as far as you can, pause for a full minute without moving at all and feel heavy; then begin at the lower part of your spine and very slowly start to raise it. Be careful not to hold your breath, and watch to breathe as easily and quietly as you can while your head is moving.
If this exercise hurts the back of your neck or any part of your spine, don't be troubled by it, but go right ahead and you will soon come to where it not only does not hurt, but is very restful.
When you have reached an erect position again stay there quietly—first take long gentle breaths and let them get shorter and shorter until they are a good natural length, then forget your breathing altogether and sit still as if you never had moved, you never were going to move, and you never wanted to move.
This emphasizes the good natural quiet in your brain and so makes you more sensitive to unquiet.
Gradually you will get the habit of catching yourself in states of unnecessary excitement; at such times you cannot go off by yourself and go through the exercises. You cannot even stop where you are and go through them, but you can recall the impression made on your brain at the time you did them and in that way rule out your excitement and gain the real power that should be in its place.
So little by little the state of excitement becomes as unpleasant as a cloud of dust on a windy day and the quiet is as pleasant as under the trees on top of a hill in the best kind of a June day.
The trouble is so many of us live in a cloud of dust that we do not suspect even the existence of the June day, but if we are fortunate enough once or twice even to get to sneezing from the dust, and so to recognize its unpleasantness, then we want to look carefully to see if there is not a way out of it.
It is then that we can get the beginning of the real quiet which is the normal atmosphere of every human being.
But we must persist for a long time before we can feel established in the quiet itself. What is worth having is worth working for—and the more it is worth having, the harder work is required to get it.
Nerves form habits, and our nerves not only get the habit of living in the dust, but the nerves of all about us have the same habit. So that when at first we begin to get into clear air, we may almost dislike it, and rush back into the dust again, because we and our friends are accustomed to it.
All that bad habit has to be fought, and conquered, and there are many difficulties in the way of persistence, but the reward is worth it all, as I hope to show in later articles.
I remember once walking in a crowded street where the people were hurrying and rushing, where every one's face was drawn and knotted, and nobody seemed to be having a good time. Suddenly and unexpectedly I saw a man coming toward me with a face so quiet that it showed out like a little bit of calm in a tornado. He looked like a common, every-day man of the world, so far as his dress and general bearing went, and his features were not at all unusual, but his expression was so full of quiet interest as to be the greatest contrast to those about him. He was not thinking his own thoughts either—he was one of the crowd and a busy, interested observer.
He might have said, "You silly geese, what are you making all this fuss about, you can do it much better if you will go more easily." If that was his thought it came from a very kindly sense of humor, and he gave me a new realization of what it meant, practically, to be in the world and not of it.
If you are in the world you can live, and observe, and take a much better part in its workings. If you are of it, you are simply whirled in an eddy of dust, however you may pose to yourself or to others.
"I AM so tired, so tired—I go to bed tired, I get up tired, and I am tired all the time."
How many women—how many hundred women, how many thousand women—say that to themselves and to others constantly.
It is perfectly true; they are tired all the time; they do go to bed tired and get up tired and stay tired all day.
If, however, they could only know how very much they increase their fatigue by their constant mental emphasis of it, and if at the same time they could turn their wills in the direction of decreasing the fatigue, instead of emphasizing it, a very large percentage of the tired feeling could be done away with altogether.
Many women would gladly make more of an effort in the direction of rest if they knew how, and I propose in this article to give a prescription for the cure of the tired emphasis which, if followed, will bring happy results.
When you go to bed at night, no matter how tired you feel, instead of thinking how tired you are, think how good it is that you can go to bed to get rested.
It will probably seem absurd to you at first. You may say to yourself: "How ridiculous, going to bed to get rested, when I have only one short night to rest in, and one or two weeks in bed would not rest me thoroughly."
The answer to that is that if you have only one night in which to rest, you want to make the most of that night, and if you carry the tired emphasis to bed with you you are really holding on to the tired.
This is as practically true as if you stepped into a bog and then sat in it and looked forlorn and said. "What a terrible thing it is that I should be in a bog like this; just think of having to sit in a black, muddy bog all the time," and staying there you made no effort whatever to get out of it, even though there was dry land right in front of you.
Again you may answer: "But in my tired bog there is no dry land in front of me, none at all."
I say to that, there is much more dry land than you think—if you will open your eyes—and to open your eyes you must make an effort.
No one knows, who has not tried, what a good strong effort will do in the right direction, when we have been living and slipping back in the wrong direction.
The results of such efforts seem at times wonderful to those who have learned the right direction for the first time.
To get rid of the tired emphasis when we have been fixed in it, a very strong effort is necessary at first, and gradually it gets easier, and easier, until we have cast off the tired emphasis entirely and have the habit of looking toward rest.
We must say to ourselves with decision in so many words, and must think the meaning of the words and insist upon it: "I am very tired. Yes, of course, I am very tired, but I am going to bed to get rested."
There are a hundred little individual ways that we can talk to ourselves, and turn ourselves toward rest, at the end of the day when the time comes to rest.
One way to begin, which is necessary to most of us, is to stop resisting the tired. Every complaint of fatigue, whether it is merely in our own minds, or is made to others, is full of resistance, and resistance to any sort of fatigue emphasizes it proportionately.
That is why it is good to say to ourselves: "Yes, I am tired; I am awfully tired. I am willing to be tired."
When we have used our wills to drop the nervous and muscular contractions that the fatigue has caused, we can add with more emphasis and more meaning, "and I am going to bed to get rested."
Some one could say just here: "That is all very well for an ordinarily tired person, but it would never do me any good. I am too tired even to try it."
The answer to that is, the more tired you are, the more you need to try it, and the more interesting the experiment will be.
Also the very effort of your brain needed to cast off the tired emphasis will be new to you, and thought in a new direction is always restful in itself. Having learned to cast off the tired emphasis when we go to bed at night, we can gradually learn to cast it off before we go to meals, and at odd opportunities throughout the day.
The more tired we are, the more we need to minimize our fatigue by the intelligent use of our own wills.
Who cares for a game that is simple and easy? Who cares for a game when you beat as a matter of course, and without any effort on your part at all?
Whoever cares for games at all cares most for good, stiff ones, where, when you have beaten, you can feel that you have really accomplished something; and when you have not beaten, you have at least learned points that will enable you to beat the next time, or the next to the next time—or sometime. And everyone who really loves a game wants to stick to it until he has conquered and is proficient.
Why not wake up, and realize that same interest and courage in this biggest game of all—this game of life?
We must play it!
Few of us are cowards enough to put ourselves out of it. Unless we play it and obey the rules we do not really play at all.
Many of us do not know the rules, but it is our place to look about and find them out.
Many more of us think that we can play the game better if we make up rules of our own, and leave out whatever regular rules we do know, that do not suit our convenience.
But that never works.
It only sometimes seems to work; and although plain common sense shows us over and over that the game played according to our own ideas amounts to nothing, it is strange to see how many work and push to play the game in their own way instead of in the game's way.
It is strange to see how many shove blindly in this direction, and that direction, to cut their way through a jungle, when there is the path just by them, if they will take it.
Most of us do not know our own power because we would rather stay in a ditch and complain.
Strength begets strength, and we can only find our greater power, by using intelligently, and steadily, the power we have.