it. How can she secure
emotional equilibrium for herself?

Keep in mind the fact that most sick people are very suggestible; that
you have a definite responsibility to make your suggestions to your
patient wholesome; and that your mood is a constant suggestion to him.
Remember that he needs your best. Then, if your own trouble seems too
great to bear, determine that, so long as you remain on duty, you will
not let it show. Try an experiment. See if you can go through the day
carrying your load of sorrow, or disappointment or chagrin, with so
serene a face that the sick for whom you are caring will not suspect
that you have a burden at all. That is a triumph worth the striving.
Then--if you can let it make you a little more comprehending of others'
pain, a little more gentle with the sickest ones, a bit more patient
with the trying ones, more kindly firm with the unco-operative,
realizing that each one of them all has his burden too--you have not
choked feeling, but you have fulfilled reason's counsel: that sick
people are not the ones to help you in your stress; that a good nurse
should rise above personal trouble to the duty at hand. Your judgment
has compared your reasons, and decided that you should act before your
patients as you would if all were well. And _will_ holds you to
emotional equilibrium. Such a thing can be done in a very large measure;
and no better opportunity for emotional control will ever be offered
than the necessity of being calm and serene before your patients, no
matter how you feel.

But, while reason and judgment teach us to control the expression of
certain feelings, they urge that this control be exercised in
transforming those feelings into helpful ones and giving them an
adequate outlet. Such a substitution has been suggested above. Let us
not forget that nothing in existence is of personal value until it gives
some one an emotion; that feeling is the beauty of life; that living,
without the happy, wholesome affective glow, would not be worth the
effort; that beauty and strength and sweetness of feeling make for a
worthy self. Remember, too, that feeling is the curse of life. It is
feeling that would make us give up the whole struggle; and ugliness and
weakness and bitterness of feeling make for a despicable self.

Hope lies for us all in the realization that we can choose our feelings,
our responses. We can be utterly discouraged, and bitter and depressed
at failure; or we can recogniz