but,” you say, “i am not full of uncharitableness towards my fellows and i am willing they should live their own lives; i am greatly worried about my own affairs and all my cares come trooping back to me as soon as i lie down. i cannot sleep for worry.” yes; but is not that only another form of selfishness? a subtle form, but none the less disturbing. moreover, it is shortsighted, as is all selfishness, for it is a boomerang. if the worry is about business, we shall need a clear brain and a steady nerve to face the condition that is causing the uneasiness; and worry at night will not give us these. on the contrary, it will destroy what remnant of poise we may have.
the solution of trouble is not found in worry. just recall how often you have said yourself, or heard somebody say, “after all my worrying it came out all right; it is strange that i never once thought of that way.” worry prevents clear thinking, or, indeed, thinking of any sort. we go around and around in a circle un52til we grow giddy and faint with apprehension, while all the time we might have peace if we but looked at life aright, to see that, in the words of the old book, “it is all very good.” when a mechanic is putting a machine together and finds that the parts do not fit, that they do not “go right” or harmonize, he will reach one of two conclusions. either the maker did not know his business, and so did not make the parts to fit, or else he, himself, is putting them together in the wrong way. if he wants to put that machine together so that it will work well, he will look into the matter carefully, examining each part, all the time keeping in his mind a conception of the complete machine. he will probably find that he has been trying to fit two unrelated parts together, or has reversed their position, misunderstood or only partially understood their uses, or has done something through carelessness that may easily be corrected. of course, if he is a stupid or foolish workman, and not a skilled mechanic, he may persist in his wrong course and fail to get the machine into working order. but that is not the fault of the maker, nor does it prove that the machine would not do perfect work if it were rightly understood and intelligently controlled. so it is with the cosmos, the orderly world, which will go right for us if we do our part right.
the first step towards knowing how to get anything is to have a clear idea of what it is that we want; for development is not thrust upon us, nor dropped upon us by our parents. it is desire that creates function; the creature that wants to swim is the creature that learns to swim; the bird that does not want to fly will lose the power; before we can rise higher, we must look higher.
“when the ideal once alights in our streets,” says edward carpenter, “we may go home to supper in peace, the rest will be seen to.” but, if we enjoy worry as the countryman’s wife “enjoys poor health,” we shall continue to have it, for we always get what we most want, if we set about it in the right way. and if we do not want worry, we need not worry. if the trouble is unavoidable or unchangeable, it were wise to use our powers to adjust ourselves to the inevitable. if it be a curable trouble, the only thing is to discover or devise a cure. as soon as we start to work we cease to worry, because worry and effective activity cannot exist at the same time. man, at least, is such a creature that any real action looking towards a definite end brings him pleasure; and, though the action may have been stimulated by pain, yet the pleasure he finds in the action mitigates, if it does not destroy, the pain.
if the original cause for the worry lies in our own ignorance, selfishness, or thoughtlessness, the anxiety may teach us to repair the ill so that we may not have to get the same lesson again. but worrying will teach us less than a cheerful acceptance of the facts—or than that courage which says,
“and still the menace of the years
finds and shall find me unafraid”—
and one of the best aids to cheerfulness is sound, refreshing sleep. if we should put off all worrying until the morning, there would be very little worrying done by the normal, healthy person, for, after a good night’s sleep and in the clear light of day, things look much better than they did in the darkness and solitude of the night, with mind and body worn from the activities of the day.
if we feel that our affairs are too important to be left to the care of the providence that keepeth israel, and slumbers not nor sleeps, then at least we may wait until morning to give our attention to them. it is unfair to bring exhausted faculties to bear upon matters of so great weight. if our troubles can be helped by worrying, we should worry when we are in the best possible trim. to do less were to underestimate their importance and to prove that, anyway, they are not worth losing sleep over.
but there is still another way of looking at wakefulness, when we cannot trace the cause of it. it may be the time sent to us by the spirit for quiet thought. the ancients believed that god spoke in visions of the night. we may not always be able to sleep, but we can always lie in the arms of our great mother nature. there is a real philosophy as well as devotion in the old prayer we teach our children, “now i lay me down to sleep.” a still older form of the almost instinctive recognition of the fact that sleeping is but intrusting ourselves to the universal love was, “he committed himself to god in sleep.” like sleep, a wakeful night may be a growing time. it affords the quiet, the time, the seclusion to think over the meanings of things, or even to seek the cause of the wakefulness itself. for that is the first thing to do if we find ourselves wakeful; if the cause be so obscure that we cannot find it, then the best thing to do is to accept the fact.
either we do not need the sleep we are seeking,—the reclining position being all the rest the body needs,—or else we do need the wakefulness to teach us something that we can learn or will learn in no other way. it is a time when, free from the watchful eyes of those who love us, or those who do not love us, we need not fear to look at ourselves, our motives, our relations to our fellows.
it may be only at such a time that we can feel the closeness of the tie that binds all mankind, only in such a time that a life-giving sense of oneness can renew life and joy. some persons are so acutely conscious of the surge around them during the day that it is difficult, if not impossible, for them to get any large view of it. they are so beset and bewildered by each little detail of life that they cannot see any relation among things as a whole, cannot “see the wood for the trees.” or, it may be that a lack of poise, a false estimate of the relations of things, makes them find “their own affairs” so interesting or exhausting that the observing mind gets no large or deep impressions to be added to the sum of the knowledge the inner self possesses.
for either of these classes the wakeful night may prove more restful and helpful than hours of sleep. it may be made to bring a breadth of view that will lift one out of the narrow limits in which daily life is passed. it may do as much as this for any of us, and, if we reject the receptive mood, and insist upon objecting to the wakefulness, we may thereby deprive ourselves of some of the most illuminating experiences.
someone has said: “sleep, like drink, may drown our sorrows, yet it also drowns our joys. what could we not accomplish if we did not require sleep?” it may be comforting to think of this when we are lying awake, that at least we are wasting no time. the gift of wakefulness is often as desirable as is the gift of sleep, and, if we welcome the one as what must be—with as much cheerfulness as the other—each will bring us equal blessings. it often happens that what we regard as evil is but life’s left hand outstretched with a gift whose use we did not recognize when presented by her right hand.
