The machinery of his volition, in all directions save one, has been
clogged, through persistent neglect, due to over-specialization. His
mind needs to be cleared, and it can be cleared--it will clear
itself--if regular periods of repose are enforced upon it. As things
are, it practically never gets a holiday from business. I do not mean
that the plain man is always thinking about his business; but I mean
that he is always liable to think about his business, that his
business is always present in his mind, even if dormant there, and
that at every opportunity, if the mind happens to be inactive, it sits
up querulously and insists on attention. The man's mind is indeed
rather like an unfortunate domestic servant who, though not always at
work, is never off duty, never night or day free from the menace of a
damnable electric bell; and it is as stale as that servant. His
business is capable of ringing the bell when the man is eating his
soup, when he is sitting alone with his wife on a warm summer evening,
and especially when he wakes just before dawn to pity and praise
himself.
But he defends the position:
"My business demands much reflection--constant watchfulness."
Well, in the first place, an enterprise which demands watchfulness day
and night from the same individual is badly organized, and should be
reorganized. It runs contrary to the common sense of Nature. And, in
the second place, his defence is insincere. He does not submit to the
eternal preoccupation because he thinks he ought, but simply because
he cannot help it. How often, especially just before the dawn, has he
not longed to be delivered from the perfectly futile preoccupation, so
that he might go to sleep again--and failed to get free! How often, in
the midst of some jolly gathering, has he not felt secretly desolate
because the one tyrannic topic would run round and round in his mind,
just like a clockwork mouse, accomplishing no useful end, and making
impossible any genuine participation in the gaiety that environs him!
Instead of being necessary to the success of his business, this morbid
preoccupation is positively detrimental to his business. He would
think much more usefully, more powerfully, more creatively, about his
business if during at least thirteen consecutive hours each day he
never thought of it at all.
And there is still a further point in this connection. Let him imagine
how delightful it must be for the people in the home which he has
made, the loving people whom he loves and to whom in theory he is
devoting his career, to feel continually that he only sees them
obscurely through the haze emanating from his business!
Why--worse!--even when he is sitting with his wife, he and she might
as well be communicating with each other across a grille against which
a turnkey is standing and listening to every word said! Let him
imagine how flattering for her! She might be more flattered, at any
rate more thrilled, if she knew that instead of thinking about his
business he was thinking about another woman. Could he shut the front
door every afternoon on his business, the effect would not only be
beneficial upon it and upon him, but his wife would smile the warm
smile of wisdom justified. Like most women, she has a firmer grasp of
the essence of life than the man upon whom she is dependent. She knows
with her heart (what he only knows with his brain) that business,
politics, and "all that sort of thing" are secondary to real
existence, the mere preliminaries of it. She would rejoice, in the
blush of the compliment he was paying her, that he had at last begun
to comprehend the ultimate values!
So far as I am aware, there is no patent device for suddenly gaining
that control of the mind which will enable one to free it from an
obsession such as the obsession of the plain man. The desirable end
can, however, be achieved by slow degrees, and by an obvious method
which contains naught of the miraculous. If the victim of the
obsession will deliberately try to think of something else, or to
think of nothing at all--every time he catches himself in the act of
thinking about his business out of hours, he certainly will, sooner or
later--probably in about a fortnight--cure the obsession, or at least
get the upper hand of it. The treatment demands perseverance, but it
emphatically does not demand an impossibly powerful effort. It is an
affair of trifling pertinacious touches.
It is a treatment easier to practise during daylight, in company, when
distractions are plentiful, than in the solitude of the night.
Triumphantly to battle with an obsession at night, when the vitality
is low and the egoism intensified, is extremely difficult. But the
small persistent successes of the day will gradually have their
indirect influence on the night. A great deal can also be done by
simple resolute suggestion. Few persons seem to know--what is,
nevertheless, a fact--that the most effective moment for making
resolves is in the comatose calm which precedes going to sleep. The
entire organism is then in a passive state, and more permanently
receptive of the imprint of volition than at any other period of the
twenty-four hours. If regularly at that moment the man says clearly
and imperiously to himself, "I will not allow my business to preoccupy
me at home; I will not allow my business to preoccupy me at home; I
will not allow my business to preoccupy me at home," he will be
astonished at the results; which results, by the way, are reached by
subconscious and therefore unperceived channels whose workings we can
only guess at.
And when the obsession is beaten, destroyed, he will find himself not
merely fortified with the necessary pluck and initiative for importing
a new interest into his existence. His instincts of their own accord
will be asking for that interest, for they will have been set free.
V
In choosing a distraction--that is to say, in choosing a rival to his
business--he should select some pursuit whose nature differs as much
as possible from the nature of his business, and which will bring into
activity another side of his character. If his business is monotonous,
demanding care and solicitude rather than irregular intense efforts of
the brain, then let his distraction be such as will make a powerful
call upon his brain. But if, on the other hand, the course of his
business runs in crises that string up the brain to its tightest
strain, then let his distraction be a foolish and merry one. Many men
fall into the error of assuming that their hobbies must be as
dignified and serious as their vocations, though surely the example of
the greatest philosophers ought to have taught them better! They seem
to imagine that they should continually be improving themselves, in
either body or mind. If they take up a sport, it is because the sport
may improve their health. And if the hobby is intellectual it must
needs be employed to improve their brain. The fact is that their
conception of self-improvement is too narrow. In their restricted
sense of the phrase, they possibly don't need improving; they possibly
are already improved to the point of being a nuisance to their
fellow-creatures; possibly what they need is worsening. In the broad
and full sense of the phrase self-improvement, a course of
self-worsening might improve them. I have known men--and everybody has
known them--who would approach nearer to perfection if they could only
acquire a little carelessness, a little absent-mindedness, a little
illogicalness, a little irrational and infantile gaiety, a little
unscrupulousness in the matter of the time of day. These
considerations should be weighed before certain hobbies are dismissed
as being unworthy of a plain man's notice.
Then comes the hour of decision, in which the wise plain man should
exert all that force of will for which he is famous in his house. For
this hour may be of supreme importance--may be the close of one epoch
in his life and the beginning of another. The more volitional energy
he can concentrate in it, the more likely is he to succeed in the fine
enterprise of his own renaissance. He must resolve with as much
intensity of will as he once put into the resolution which sent him to
propose marriage to his wife. And, indeed, he must be ready to treat
his hobby somewhat as though it were a woman desired--with splendid
and uncalculating generosity. He must shower money on it, and, what is
more, he must shower time on it. He must do the thing properly. A
hobby is not a hobby until it is glorified, until some real sacrifice
has been made for it. If he has chosen a hobby that is costly, both in
money and in time, if it is a hobby difficult for a busy and prudent
man to follow, all the better. If it demands that his business shall
suffer a little, and that his life-long habits of industry shall seem
to be jeopardized, again all the better. For, you know, despite his
timid fears, his business will not suffer, and lifelong habits, even
good ones, are not easily jeopardized. One of the most precious jewels
of advice ever offered to the plain man was that he should acquire
industrious habits, and then try to lose them! He will soon find that
he cannot lose them, but the transient struggles against them will
tend always to restore the sane balance of his nature.
He must deliberately arrange pleasures for himself in connection with
his hobby, and as often as possible. Once a week at least his
programme should comprise some item of relaxation to which he can look
forward with impatience because he has planned it, and because he has
compelled seemingly more urgent matters to give way to it; and look
forward to it he must, tasting it in advance, enjoying it twice over!
Thus may the appetite for pleasure, the ability really to savour it,
be restored--and incidentally kept in good trim for full use when old
age arrives and he enters the lotus-land. And with it all, when the
hour of enjoyment comes, he must insist on his mind being free;
expelling every preoccupation, nonchalantly accepting risks like a
youth, he must abandon himself to the hour. Let him practise
lightheartedness as though it were charity. Indeed, it is charity--to
his household, for instance. Ask his household.
He says:
"All this is very dangerous. My friends won't recognize me. I may go
too far. I may become an idler and a spendthrift."
Have no fear.