It will harm few of us to take a bird's eye view of our affairs at stated
intervals, and ask ourselves if the time has not arrived when it will be a
saving of time and money as well as worry for us to delegate more of the
details, and more even of the responsibilities, to others, concentrating
our own energies upon such tasks as we are now peculiarly qualified to
undertake. To the man determined to accomplish a lifetime of work before he
rests, there is food for thought in the following anecdote:
When Pyrrhus was about to sail for Italy, Cineas, a wise and good man,
asked him what were his intentions and expectations.
"To conquer Rome," said Pyrrhus.
"And what will you do next, my lord?"
"Next I will conquer Italy."
"And after that?"
"We will subdue Carthage, Macedonia, all Africa, and all Greece."
"And when we have conquered all we can, what shall we do?"
"Do? Why, then we will sit down and spend our time in peace and comfort."
"Ah, my lord," said the wise Cineas, "what prevents our being in peace and
comfort now?"
The time to take a vacation is before one is exhausted. If one is
discontented during his vacation, he should take it, none the less, as a
matter of duty, not expecting to enjoy every moment of it, but contenting
himself with the anticipation of greater pleasure in the resumption of his
duties. He should cultivate an interest in out-door occupation or some
study that carries him into the fields or woods. Aside from the time on
shipboard, the worst possible vacation for the over-worked business or
professional man is the trip to Europe, if spent in crowding into the
shortest possible time the greatest possible amount of information on
matters artistic, architectural, and historic.
No one can acquire the habit of sleep who has not learned the habit of
concentration, of devoting himself single-minded to the matter in hand. If
we practice devoting our minds, as we do our bodies, to one object at a
time, we shall not only accomplish more, but with less exhaustion. Training
in this direction will help us, on retiring, to view sleep as our present
duty, and a sufficient duty, without taking the opportunity at that time to
adjust (or to try to adjust) all our tangles, to review our past sources of
discomfort, and to speculate upon the ills of the future.
A walk, a bath, a few gymnastic exercises, will often serve a useful
purpose before retiring, but if they are undertaken in a fretful and
impatient spirit, and are accompanied by doubts of their effectiveness,
and the insistent thought that sleep will not follow these or any other
procedure, they are likely to accomplish little.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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