IMAGINARY FEARS
O soft embalmer of the still midnight.
KEATS.
When we learn to confine our attention to “the things that are quite
enough for any man to attempt,” we shall find that there is little real
ground for worry or fretting in our daily life. It is a fact that,
if our work wearies or exhausts us, either we are doing the wrong
thing or else doing it in the wrong way. For the Spirit of Life is
no taskmaster. It is we who make this world a daily grind. It is not
naturally a “vale of tears” nor a “wilderness of woe.”
“Joy upon joy and gain upon gain
Are the destined rights of my birth,”
and we may all have those rights if we claim them as our own. Worry
is a disease that some people enjoy as much as some others enjoy
invalidism. There are some people who can hardly speak and think of
anything but their physical ailments; they never recall the mornings
when they felt strong and vigorous, the nights they slept soundly, but
only the days when they had uncomfortable sensations of weakness or
distress, and the nights when sleep was somewhat broken. And you will
notice that they will say they “did not sleep well” when they mean
that they did not sleep much. We may always sleep _well_, even though
we do not sleep much.
There are other people who, though they do not weary us with accounts
of their bodily symptoms, tell us always of their cares. They revel in
tales of distress which shall go to show how much more oppressed they
are than their fellows. They take their worries as the healthy farmer
takes his food, eagerly, and would be distinctly upset if anything
happened to interfere with their enjoyment of them. If they are going
somewhere, they worry lest it should rain, or lest something unforeseen
should happen to prevent the expedition. It is the same old story, they
want their “own way.” They cannot conceive of a disappointment being a
blessing in disguise; they know of nothing so hard to be borne as the
setting aside of a passing desire.
For such as these life is full of “bitter disappointments”; cares and
worries naturally fall to their lot; the sun seldom shines for them,
and even when it does they think they can note the spots upon it,—while
the rain falls so heavily and so frequently that it makes runnels over
their whole plan of life, reducing it to a scene of desolation. And all
the time the sun is shining, and joys are awaiting them did they but
look in the right direction. They are “pulling the wrong string,” as
it were. A little child kept calling to his mother that he could not
find what he was seeking, because he could not “make the light come
on.” His mother wisely replied: “You are probably pulling the wrong
string, Harold. Pull the other.” The moment he did so the electric
light flooded the room, and the child found what he sought. It had lain
right to his hand all the time, but he did not know to pull the right
string. Our heart’s desire lies just as close to us.
Many a person who is always having trouble, who is worried and uneasy,
longing for rest and comfort but never finding it; to whom “life is
a dreary puzzle scarcely worth the solving,” is simply “pulling the
wrong string,” the string of self-will, of separateness. His soul is
darkened by his refusal to turn on the light, and the shadow covers the
whole of his life.
The darkness is filled with imaginary terrors. We people the corners
with hobgoblins that do not exist, and that in our hearts we know could
not exist. Little Bessie had for several nights cried out in terror
after she had been put to bed, so that her mother was compelled to go
to her. At first she would not say what had frightened her, but at
last the story came out.
“I was thinking how frightened I should be if there was a bogey-man
in the closet and he should suddenly put his head out and make faces
at me.” “But, child,” said her mother, “you know there is no such
thing as a bogey-man, so he could not be in the closet, nor make faces
at you.” “Yes, mother, I know that,” answered the child, slowly;
“but, mother, _if_ there was a bogey-man, and he did get into my
closet, and if he did put out his head and make faces at me, wouldn’t
I be awfully frightened? Well, it’s _that_ that makes me scream.” And
often the thing that makes us “scream” has no more existence in fact
than Bessie’s bogey-man. We get to turning things over in our minds,
dwelling upon dire possibilities until they become actual to us, and we
get as much pain and suffering from them as we should if they were real.
It would puzzle ourselves, if we gave the matter attention, to discover
why we are more given to worrying than to rejoicing, if it is not that
we misunderstand life and its purposes.
Consider life just on its physical side, and we shall see, as the
Creator saw when he looked upon it, that it is all very good. There are
more sunny days in the year than stormy ones; there is more growing
time than decaying time, for spring, summer, and autumn comprise three
parts of the year, and growth continues through them all; the moon
shines always somewhere, and “the stars come nightly to the sky.” The
bright-colored blossoms show more than the somber-hued; more birds sing
sweetly than croak harshly, and even the croak melts into the symphony
as a needed note. The purely material world points to joy and gladness
rather than to sorrow and repining.
Then, when we come to man, we find that he has more strength than
weakness, more health than sickness, more power than inability, else
man had not survived the ages. Moreover, man must have more capacity
for enjoyment than for sorrow, else he would abandon life in weariness,
or at best he would forget how to laugh; the mere animal does not
laugh, that is one of man’s accomplishments.
Man has also more desire for knowledge than for ease, else he would
never have penetrated into the secrets and mysteries of Nature; man’s
strong aspirations surmount his groveling tendencies, else he had never
come up out of savagery into the light and development of kinship with
the high gods.
Then, why should we give way to repining? All things point to the
apostolic truth that “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh
in the morning.” And always the morning comes. Moreover, the darkest
night is seldom starless if we look up intently enough. If we blind our
eyes with tears, we cannot see the light even when the horizon is rosy
with the rising sun. Better by far is it to feel with Browning:
“How good is man’s life,
The mere living! How fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy.”