Our Nervous Friends — Illustrating the Mastery of NervousnessCarroll, Robert S. (Robert Sproul)
Science
Our Nervous Friends — Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness
Carroll, Robert S. (Robert Sproul)
Nervous system -- Hygiene
Again, gently, "Your dollars are worthless. You are poor in the gold
which will buy your restoration. I shall tell you about it Wednesday
if you want to know."
On both Monday and Tuesday visits her curiosity prompted her to refer
to the great cure Dr. Bond mentioned. But it was Wednesday afternoon
before he spoke seriously.
"You were very ill last week--such illnesses have frequently proved
fatal to life, when ignorantly managed. But as I see you to-day,
knowing your radiant childhood, and the good fortune which was yours
for years, and the heart-tearing shock which came so cruelly, I see a
sickness more dire and fatal than any for which you have ever yet been
treated. The beauty and youth and charity of your spirit are mortally
ill. I see your soul an emaciated remnant, a skeleton of its possible
self. It threatens to die before your body. Selfish sorrow has
infected and permeated your once lovely, better self, and to-day you
have no true goodness left. You are good to others that they may be
better to you. You are generous with your means-a generosity which
costs you no sacrifice, that you may buy back the generosity without
which you could not live. Four useful lives are emptying the best of
their strength, ability and love into years of service that you may
know a poor, low-grade, selfish, physical comfort. You are taking from
them and others consideration, self-sacrifice, loyalty, unstinted
devotion, and giving in return only ungrateful dollars. You are rich
in these, but poorer than Lazarus in the least of the qualities which
make life worth living a day, which keep Death from being a haunting
terror. You have not one physical symptom of your endless catalog
which cannot be removed if you meet the blessings half-way which
discomforts offer."
It couldn't have been what Dr. Bond said--it must have been what he
was himself that made those unwelcome, humiliating truths carry
conviction, win confidence, and waken hope. Possibly his last sentence
helped her decision--his serious confidence in his ability to remove
those terrifying, ever impending threats of physical anguish. At any
rate, she gave her promise-for six months she would implicitly follow
his instruction, with the understanding that if she did not see
herself better at the end of four months, she was to be released from
further treatment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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