Relaxation
The ability to relax the tension of work is as important as the power of
concentration; for the two processes combine in the doing of the highest
kind of work. There are, it is true, great differences between men in
capacity for sustained toil. Some men are able to put forth their energy
at the highest point of efficiency for a short time only, while the
endurance of others seems to be almost without limit. In manual or
mechanical work it is mainly a question of physical or nervous resources;
in creative work, however relaxation is not a matter of choice; it is a
matter of necessity, because it affects the quality of the product. In the
alertness of attention, the full activity of every faculty, the glow of
the imagination, which accompany the putting forth of the creative power,
the whole force of the worker is concentrated and his whole nature is
under the highest tension. Everything he holds of knowledge, skill,
experience, emotion flows to one point; as waters which have gathered from
the surface of a great stretch of country sometimes run together and
sweep, in deep, swift current, through a narrow pass. In such moments
there is a concentration of thought, imagination, and spiritual energy
which fuses all the forces of the worker into one force and directs that
force to a single point.
In such a moment there is obviously a closing in of a man's nature from
outward influences. The very momentum with which the absorbed worker is
urged on in the accomplishment of his design shuts him from those
approaches of truth and knowledge which are made only when the mind is at
ease. One sees a hundred things in the woods as he saunters through their
depths which are invisible as he rushes through on a flying train; and one
is conscious of a vast world of sights, sounds, and odours when he sits
out of doors at ease, of which he is oblivious when he is absorbed in any
kind of task. Now, in order to give work the individuality and freshness
of the creative spirit, one must be, at certain times, as open to these
manifold influences from without as one must be, at other times, closed
against them; the tension of the whole being which is necessary for the
highest achievement must be intermitted. The flow of energy must be
stopped at intervals in order that the reservoir may have time to fill. In
the lower forms of work relaxation is necessary for health; in the higher
forms of work it is essential for creativeness.
It is a very superficial view of the nature of man which limits growth to
periods of self-conscious activity; a view so superficial that it not only
betrays ignorance of the real nature of man's relation to his world, but
also of the real nature of work. Activity is not necessarily work; it is
often motion without direction, progress, or productiveness; mere waste of
energy. In every field of life--religious, intellectual, material--there
is an immense amount of activity which is sheer waste of power. Work is
energy intelligently put forth; and intelligence in work depends largely
upon keeping the whole nature in close and constant relation with all the
sources of power. To be always doing something is to be as useless for the
higher purposes of growth and influence as to be always idle; one can do
nothing with a great show of energy, and one can do much with very little
apparent effort. In no field of work is the difference between barren and
fruitful activity more evident than in teaching. Every one who has
acquaintance with teachers knows the two types: the man who is never at
rest, but who pushes through the school day, watch in hand, with gongs
sounding, monitors marking, classes marching, recitations beginning and
ending with military precision, sharply defined sections in each text-book
arbitrarily covered in each period; a mechanic of tireless activity, who
never by any chance touches the heart of the subject, opens the mind of
the pupil, enriches his imagination, or liberates his personality: and the
other type, the real teacher, who is concerned not to sustain a mechanical
industry, but to create a dynamic energy; who cares more for truth than
for facts, for ability than for dexterity, for skill of the soul than for
cunning of the brain; who aims to put his pupil in heart with nature as
well as in touch with her phenomena; to disclose the formative spirit in
history as well as to convey accurate information; to uncover the depths
of human life in literature as well as to set periods of literary
development in external order. Such a man may use few methods, and attach
small importance to them; the railroad atmosphere of the schedule may be
hateful to him in the school-room; but he is the real worker, for he
achieves that which his noisier and more bustling colleague misses,--the
education of his pupils. He is not content to impart knowledge; he must
also impart culture; for without culture knowledge is the barren
possession of the intellectual artisan.
Now, culture involves repose, openness of mind, that spiritual hospitality
which is possible only when the nature is relaxed and lies fallow like the
fields which are set aside in order that they may regain fertility. The
higher the worker the deeper the need of relaxation in the large sense. A
man must be nourished before he can feed others; must be enriched in his
own nature before he can make others rich; must be inspired before he
reveal, prophesy, or create in any field. If he makes himself wholly a
working power, he isolates himself from the refreshment and re-creative
power of the living universe in which he toils; in that isolation he may
do many things with feverish haste, but he can do nothing with commanding
ability. He narrows his energy to a rivulet by cutting himself off from
the hills on which the feeding springs rise and the clouds pour down their
richness. The rivulet may be swift, but it can never have depth, volume,
or force. The great streams in which the stars shine and on which the
sails of commerce whiten and fade are fed by half a continent.
To the man who is bent upon the highest personal efficiency through the
most complete self-development a large part of life must be set aside for
that relaxation which, by relief from tension and from concentration, puts
the worker into relation with the influences and forces that nourish and
inspire the spirit. The more one can gain in his passive moods, the more
will he have to give in his active moods; for the greater the range of
one's thought, the truer one's insight, and the deeper one's force of
imagination, the more will one's skill express and convey. A man's life
ought to be immensely in excess of his expression, and a man's life has
its springs far below the plane of his work. Emerson's work reveals the
man, because it contains the man, but the man was fashioned before the
work began. The work played no small part in the unfolding of the man's
nature, but that which gave the work individuality and authority antedated
both poems and essays. These primal qualities had their source in the
personality of the thinker and poet, and were developed and refined by
long intimacy with nature, by that fruitful quietness and solitude which
open the soul to the approach of the deepest truths and most liberating
experiences. Emerson knew how to relax, to surrender to the hour and the
place, to invite the higher powers by throwing all the doors open; and
these receptive hours, when he gave himself into the keeping of the
spirit, were the most fertile periods of his life; they enriched and
inspired him for the hours of work.