The Untroubled MindHall, Herbert J. (Herbert James)
Philosophy
The Untroubled Mind
Hall, Herbert J. (Herbert James)
Mental health
When a man tells me he never worries, I am inclined to think that he is
either deceiving himself or trying to deceive me. The great roots of
worry are conscience, fear, and regret. Undoubtedly we ought to be
conscientious and we ought to fear and regret evil. But if it is to be
better than an impediment and a harm, our worry must be largely
unconscious, and intuitive. The moment we become conscious of worry we
are undone. Fortunately, or unfortunately, we cannot leave conscience to
its own devices unless our lives are big enough and fine enough to
warrant such a course. The remedy for the mental unrest, which is in
itself an illness, lies not in an enlightened knowledge of the
harmfulness and ineffectiveness of worry, not even in the acquirement of
an unconscious conscience, but in the living of a life so full and good
that worry cannot find place in it. That idea of worry and conscience,
that definition of serenity, simplifies life immensely. To overcome
worry by substituting development and growth need never be dull work. To
know life in its farther reaches, life in its better applications, is
the final remedy--the great undertaking--_it is life_. We must warn
ourselves, not infrequently, that the larger life is to be pursued for
its own glorious self and not for the sake of peace. Peace may come, a
peace so sure that death itself cannot shake it, but we must not expect
all our affairs to run smoothly. As a matter of fact they may run badly
enough; we shall have our ups and downs, we shall sin and repent, and
sin again, but if in the end we live according to our best intuitions,
we shall be justified, and we need not worry about the outcome. To put
it another way, if we would have the untroubled mind, we must transfer
our conscientious efforts from the small details of life--from the worry
and fret of common things--into another and a higher atmosphere. We must
transfigure common life, dignify it and ennoble it; then, although the
old causes of worry may continue, we shall have gained a stature that
will make us unconscious masters of the little troubles and in a great
degree equal to the larger requirements. Life will be easier, not
because we make less effort, but because we are working from another and
a better level.
If such a change, and it would be a change for most of us, could come
about instantly, in a flash of revelation, that would be ideal, but it
would not be life. We must return again and again to the old uninspired
state wherein we struggle conscientiously with perverse details. I would
not minimize the importance and value of this struggle; only the sooner
it changes its level the better for every one concerned. Large serenity
must, finally, be earned through the toughening of moral fibre that
comes in dealing squarely with perplexing details. Some of this struggle
must always be going on, but serener life will come when we begin to
concern ourselves with larger factors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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