the man who
reads the newspaper and forgets what he has read. It seems to me better,
whether we are sick or well, to allow long periods in our lives when we
think only casually. To the good old adage, "Work while you work and
play while you play," we might well add, "Rest while you rest," lest in
the end you should be unable successfully either to work or play.

A man is not necessarily condemned to tortures of mind because he must
rest for a week or a month or a year. I know that there must be anxious
times, especially when idleness means dependence, and when it brings
hardship to those who need our help. But the invalid must not try
constantly to puzzle the matter out. If we do not make ourselves sick
with worry, we shall be able sometime to approach active life with
sufficient frankness and force. It is the constant effort of the poor,
tired mind to solve its problems that not only fails of its object, but
plunges the invalid deeper into discouragement and misunderstanding. How
cruel this is, and how unfortunate that it should come more commonly to
those who try the hardest to overcome their handicaps, to throw off the
yoke of idleness and to be well.

When you have tried your best to get back to your work and have failed,
when you have done this not once but many times, it is inevitable that
misunderstanding should creep in, inevitable that you should question
very deeply and doubt not infrequently. Yet the chances are that one of
the reasons for your failure is that you have tried too hard, that you
have not known how to rest. When you have learned how to rest, when you
have learned to put off thinking and planning until the mind becomes
fresh and clear, when you are in a fair way to know the joy of idleness
and the peace of rest, you are a great deal more likely to get back to
efficiency and to find your way along the great paths of activity into
the world of life.

It is not so much the idleness, then, as the attempt to overcome its
irksomeness, that makes this condition painful. The invalid in bed is in
a trap, to be tormented by his thoughts unless he knows the meaning of
successful idleness. This knowledge may come to him by such strategy as
I have suggested--by giving up the struggle against worry and fret; but
peace will come surely, steadily, "with healing in its wings," when the
mind is changed altogether, when life becomes free because of a growth
and development that finds significance even in idlenes