man's life for worry.
Hence it will be seen that I believe worry to be evil, and nothing but
evil, and, therefore, without one reclaiming or redeeming feature, for
it can be productive of nothing but evil.
If you really desire to know the sources of your worry _study each
worry as it comes up_. Analyse it, dissect it, weigh it, examine it
from every standpoint, judge it by the one test that everything in
life must, and ought to submit to, viz.: its usefulness. What use
is it to you? How necessary to your existence? How helpful is it in
solving the problems that confront you; how far does it aid you in
their solution, wherein does it remove the obstacles before your
pathway. Find out how much it strengthens, invigorates, inspires you.
Ask yourself how much it encourages, enheartens, emboldens you. Put
down on paper every slightest item of good, or help, or inspiration
it is to you, and on the other hand, the harm, the discouragement, the
evil, the fears it brings to you, and then strike a balance.
I can tell you beforehand that after ten years' study--if so long were
necessary--you will fail to find one good thing in favor of worry,
and that every item you will enumerate will be against it. Hence, why
worry? Quit it!
Worry, like all evils, feeds on itself, and grows greater by its own
exercise. Did it decline when exercised, diminish when allowed a free
course, one might let it alone, even encourage it, in order that it
might the sooner be dead. But, unfortunately, it works the other
way. The more one worries the more he continues to worry. The more
he yields to it the greater becomes its power. It is a species of
hypnotism: once allow it to control, each new exercise diminishes the
victim's power of resistance.
Never was monster more cruel, more relentless, more certain to hang on
to the bitter end than worry. He shows no mercy, has not the slightest
spark of relenting or yielding. And his power is all the greater
because it is so subtle. He wants you to be "careful"--taking good
care, however, not to let you know that he means to make you _full of
care_. He pleads "love" as the cause for his existence. He would have
you love your child, hence "worry" about him. He thus trades on your
affection to blind you to your child's best interests by "worrying"
about him. For when worry besets you, is harassing you on every hand,
how can you possibly devote your wisdom, your highest intelligence to
safeguarding the we
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