THE GIFTS OF WAKEFULNESS
“But,” you say, “I am not full of uncharitableness towards my fellows
and I am willing they should live their own lives; I am greatly worried
about my own affairs and all my cares come trooping back to me as
soon as I lie down. I cannot sleep for worry.” Yes; but is not that
only another form of selfishness? A subtle form, but none the less
disturbing. Moreover, it is shortsighted, as is all selfishness, for it
is a boomerang. If the worry is about business, we shall need a clear
brain and a steady nerve to face the condition that is causing the
uneasiness; and worry at night will not give us these. On the contrary,
it will destroy what remnant of poise we may have.
The solution of trouble is not found in worry. Just recall how often
you have said yourself, or heard somebody say, “After all my worrying
it came out all right; it is strange that I never once thought of that
way.” Worry prevents clear thinking, or, indeed, thinking of any sort.
We go around and around in a circle until we grow giddy and faint
with apprehension, while all the time we might have peace if we but
looked at life aright, to see that, in the words of the old Book,
“it is all very good.” When a mechanic is putting a machine together
and finds that the parts do not fit, that they do not “go right” or
harmonize, he will reach one of two conclusions. Either the maker did
not know his business, and so did not make the parts to fit, or else
he, himself, is putting them together in the wrong way. If he wants
to put that machine together so that it will work well, he will look
into the matter carefully, examining each part, all the time keeping in
his mind a conception of the complete machine. He will probably find
that he has been trying to fit two unrelated parts together, or has
reversed their position, misunderstood or only partially understood
their uses, or has done something through carelessness that may easily
be corrected. Of course, if he is a stupid or foolish workman, and not
a skilled mechanic, he may persist in his wrong course and fail to get
the machine into working order. But that is not the fault of the maker,
nor does it prove that the machine would not do perfect work if it were
rightly understood and intelligently controlled. So it is with the
Cosmos, the orderly world, which will go right for us if we do our part
right.
The first step towards knowing how to get anything is to have a clear
idea of what it is that we want; for development is not thrust upon us,
nor dropped upon us by our parents. It is desire that creates function;
the creature that wants to swim is the creature that learns to swim;
the bird that does not want to fly will lose the power; before we can
rise higher, we must look higher.
“When the ideal once alights in our streets,” says Edward Carpenter,
“we may go home to supper in peace, the rest will be seen to.” But,
if we enjoy worry as the countryman’s wife “enjoys poor health,” we
shall continue to have it, for we always get what we most want, if we
set about it in the right way. And if we do not want worry, we need
not worry. If the trouble is unavoidable or unchangeable, it were wise
to use our powers to adjust ourselves to the inevitable. If it be a
curable trouble, the only thing is to discover or devise a cure. As
soon as we start to work we cease to worry, because worry and effective
activity cannot exist at the same time. Man, at least, is such a
creature that any real action looking towards a definite end brings him
pleasure; and, though the action may have been stimulated by pain, yet
the pleasure he finds in the action mitigates, if it does not destroy,
the pain.
If the original cause for the worry lies in our own ignorance,
selfishness, or thoughtlessness, the anxiety may teach us to repair the
ill so that we may not have to get the same lesson again. But worrying
will teach us less than a cheerful acceptance of the facts—or than that
courage which says,
“And still the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid”—
and one of the best aids to cheerfulness is sound, refreshing sleep. If
we should put off all worrying until the morning, there would be very
little worrying done by the normal, healthy person, for, after a good
night’s sleep and in the clear light of day, things look much better
than they did in the darkness and solitude of the night, with mind and
body worn from the activities of the day.
If we feel that our affairs are too important to be left to the care of
the Providence that keepeth Israel, and slumbers not nor sleeps, then
at least we may wait until morning to give our attention to them. It is
unfair to bring exhausted faculties to bear upon matters of so great
weight. If our troubles can be helped by worrying, we should worry when
we are in the best possible trim. To do less were to underestimate
their importance and to prove that, anyway, they are not worth losing
sleep over.
But there is still another way of looking at wakefulness, when we
cannot trace the cause of it. It may be the time sent to us by the
Spirit for quiet thought. The ancients believed that God spoke in
visions of the night. We may not always be able to sleep, but we can
always lie in the arms of our Great Mother Nature. There is a real
philosophy as well as devotion in the old prayer we teach our children,
“Now I lay me down to sleep.” A still older form of the almost
instinctive recognition of the fact that sleeping is but intrusting
ourselves to the Universal love was, “He committed himself to God in
sleep.” Like sleep, a wakeful night may be a growing time. It affords
the quiet, the time, the seclusion to think over the meanings of
things, or even to seek the cause of the wakefulness itself. For that
is the first thing to do if we find ourselves wakeful; if the cause
be so obscure that we cannot find it, then the best thing to do is to
accept the fact.
Either we do not need the sleep we are seeking,—the reclining position
being all the _rest_ the body needs,—or else we do need the wakefulness
to teach us something that we can learn or will learn in no other way.
It is a time when, free from the watchful eyes of those who love us, or
those who do not love us, we need not fear to look at ourselves, our
motives, our relations to our fellows.
It may be only at such a time that we can feel the closeness of the
tie that binds all mankind, only in such a time that a life-giving
sense of oneness can renew life and joy. Some persons are so acutely
conscious of the surge around them during the day that it is difficult,
if not impossible, for them to get any large view of it. They are so
beset and bewildered by each little detail of life that they cannot
see any relation among things as a whole, cannot “see the wood for
the trees.” Or, it may be that a lack of poise, a false estimate of
the relations of things, makes them find “their own affairs” so
interesting or exhausting that the observing mind gets no large or deep
impressions to be added to the sum of the knowledge the inner self
possesses.
For either of these classes the wakeful night may prove more restful
and helpful than hours of sleep. It may be made to bring a breadth of
view that will lift one out of the narrow limits in which daily life is
passed. It may do as much as this for any of us, and, if we reject the
receptive mood, and insist upon objecting to the wakefulness, we may
thereby deprive ourselves of some of the most illuminating experiences.
Someone has said: “Sleep, like drink, may drown our sorrows, yet
it also drowns our joys. What could we not accomplish if we did not
require sleep?” It may be comforting to think of this when we are lying
awake, that at least we are wasting no time. The gift of wakefulness
is often as desirable as is the gift of sleep, and, if we welcome the
one as what must be—with as much cheerfulness as the other—each will
bring us equal blessings. It often happens that what we regard as evil
is but Life’s left hand outstretched with a gift whose use we did not
recognize when presented by her right hand.