Now that I have succeeded (if succeeded I have) in persuading you to
admit to yourself that you are constantly haunted by a suppressed
dissatisfaction with your own arrangement of your daily life; and that
the primal cause of that inconvenient dissatisfaction is the feeling
that you are every day leaving undone something which you would like to
do, and which, indeed, you are always hoping to do when you have "more
time"; and now that I have drawn your attention to the glaring,
dazzling truth that you never will have "more time," since you already
have all the time there is--you expect me to let you into some
wonderful secret by which you may at any rate approach the ideal of a
perfect arrangement of the day, and by which, therefore, that haunting,
unpleasant, daily disappointment of things left undone will be got rid
of!
I have found no such wonderful secret. Nor do I expect to find it, nor
do I expect that anyone else will ever find it. It is undiscovered.
When you first began to gather my drift, perhaps there was a
resurrection of hope in your breast. Perhaps you said to yourself,
"This man will show me an easy, unfatiguing way of doing what I have so
long in vain wished to do." Alas, no! The fact is that there is no
easy way, no royal road. The path to Mecca is extremely hard and
stony, and the worst of it is that you never quite get there after all.
The most important preliminary to the task of arranging one's life so
that one may live fully and comfortably within one's daily budget of
twenty-four hours is the calm realisation of the extreme difficulty of
the task, of the sacrifices and the endless effort which it demands. I
cannot too strongly insist on this.
If you imagine that you will be able to achieve your ideal by
ingeniously planning out a time-table with a pen on a piece of paper,
you had better give up hope at once. If you are not prepared for
discouragements and disillusions; if you will not be content with a
small result for a big effort, then do not begin. Lie down again and
resume the uneasy doze which you call your existence.
It is very sad, is it not, very depressing and sombre? And yet I think
it is rather fine, too, this necessity for the tense bracing of the
will before anything worth doing can be done. I rather like it myself.
I feel it to be the chief thing that differentiates me from the cat by
the fire.
"Well," you say, "assume that I am braced for the battle. Assume that
I have carefully weighed and comprehended your ponderous remarks; how
do I begin?" Dear sir, you simply begin. There is no magic method of
beginning. If a man standing on the edge of a swimming-bath and
wanting to jump into the cold water should ask you, "How do I begin to
jump?" you would merely reply, "Just jump. Take hold of your nerves,
and jump."
As I have previously said, the chief beauty about the constant supply
of time is that you cannot waste it in advance. The next year, the
next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as
unspoilt, as if you had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in
all your career. Which fact is very gratifying and reassuring. You
can turn over a new leaf every hour if you choose. Therefore no object
is served in waiting till next week, or even until to-morrow. You may
fancy that the water will be warmer next week. It won't. It will be
colder.
But before you begin, let me murmur a few words of warning in your
private ear.
Let me principally warn you against your own ardour. Ardour in
well-doing is a misleading and a treacherous thing. It cries out
loudly for employment; you can't satisfy it at first; it wants more and
more; it is eager to move mountains and divert the course of rivers.
It isn't content till it perspires. And then, too often, when it feels
the perspiration on its brow, it wearies all of a sudden and dies,
without even putting itself to the trouble of saying, "I've had enough
of this."
Beware of undertaking too much at the start. Be content with quite a
little. Allow for accidents. Allow for human nature, especially your
own.
A failure or so, in itself, would not matter, if it did not incur a
loss of self-esteem and of self-confidence. But just as nothing
succeeds like success, so nothing fails like failure. Most people who
are ruined are ruined by attempting too much. Therefore, in setting
out on the immense enterprise of living fully and comfortably within
the narrow limits of twenty-four hours a day, let us avoid at any cost
the risk of an early failure. I will not agree that, in this business
at any rate, a glorious failure is better than a petty success. I am
all for the petty success. A glorious failure leads to nothing; a
petty success may lead to a success that is not petty.
So let us begin to examine the budget of the day's time. You say your
day is already full to overflowing. How? You actually spend in
earning your livelihood--how much? Seven hours, on the average? And in
actual sleep, seven? I will add two hours, and be generous. And I will
defy you to account to me on the spur of the moment for the other eight
hours.