As we get rid of all the grosser forms of hurry we find in ourselves
other hurry habits that are finer and more subtle, and gradually our
standards of quiet, deliberate ways get higher; we become more
sensitive to hurry, and a hurried way of doing things grows more and
more disagreeable to us.
Watch the women coming out of a factory in the dinner hour or at six
o'clock. They are almost tumbling over each other in their hurry to
get away. They are putting on their jackets, pushing in their
hatpins, and running along as if their dinner were running away from
them.
Something akin to that same attitude of rush we can see in any large
city when the clerks come out of the shops, for their luncheon hour,
or when the work of the day is over.
If we were to calculate in round numbers the amount of time saved by
this rush to get away from the shop, we should find three minutes,
probably the maximum--and if we balance that against the loss to
body and mind which is incurred, we should find the three minutes'
gain quite overweighted by the loss of many hours, perhaps days,
because of the illness which must be the result of such habitual
contraction.
It is safe to predict when we see a woman rushing away from factory
or shop that she is not going to "let up" on that rate of speed
until she is back again at work. Indeed, having once started brain
and body with such an exaggerated impetus, it is not possible to
quiet down without a direct and decided use of the will, and how is
that decided action to be taken if the brain is so befogged with the
habit of hurry that it knows no better standard?
One of the girls from a large factory came rushing up to the kind,
motherly head of the boarding house the other day saying:--
"It is abominable that I should be kept waiting so long for my
dinner. I have had my first course and here I have been waiting
twenty minutes for my dessert."
The woman addressed looked up quietly to the clock and saw that it
was ten minutes past twelve.
"What time did you come in?" she said. "At twelve o'clock."
"And you have had your first course?"
"Yes."
"And waited twenty minutes for your dessert?"
"Yes!" (snappishly).
"How can that be when you came in at twelve o'clock, and it is now
only ten minutes past?"
Of course there was nothing to say in answer, but whether the girl
took it to heart and so raised her standard of quiet one little bit,
I do not know.
One can deposit a fearful amount of strain in the brain with only a
few moments' impatience.
I use the word "fearful" advisedly, for when the strain is once
deposited it is not easily removed, especially when every day and
every moment of every day is adding to the strain.
The strain of hurry makes contractions in brain and body with which
it is impossible to work freely and easily or to accomplish as much
as might be done without such contractions.
The strain of hurry befogs the brain so that it is impossible for it
to expand to an unprejudiced point of view.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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