People say: "One can't help one's thoughts." But one can. The
control of the thinking machine is perfectly possible. And since
nothing whatever happens to us outside our own brain; since nothing
hurts us or gives us pleasure except within the brain, the supreme
importance of being able to control what goes on in that mysterious
brain is patent. This idea is one of the oldest platitudes, but it is
a platitude whose profound truth and urgency most people live and die
without realising. People complain of the lack of power to
concentrate, not witting that they may acquire the power, if they
choose.
And without the power to concentrate--that is to say, without the power
to dictate to the brain its task and to ensure obedience--true life is
impossible. Mind control is the first element of a full existence.
Hence, it seems to me, the first business of the day should be to put
the mind through its paces. You look after your body, inside and out;
you run grave danger in hacking hairs off your skin; you employ a whole
army of individuals, from the milkman to the pig-killer, to enable you
to bribe your stomach into decent behaviour. Why not devote a little
attention to the far more delicate machinery of the mind, especially as
you will require no extraneous aid? It is for this portion of the art
and craft of living that I have reserved the time from the moment of
quitting your door to the moment of arriving at your office.
"What? I am to cultivate my mind in the street, on the platform, in
the train, and in the crowded street again?" Precisely. Nothing
simpler! No tools required! Not even a book. Nevertheless, the affair
is not easy.
When you leave your house, concentrate your mind on a subject (no
matter what, to begin with). You will not have gone ten yards before
your mind has skipped away under your very eyes and is larking round
the corner with another subject.
Bring it back by the scruff of the neck. Ere you have reached the
station you will have brought it back about forty times. Do not
despair. Continue. Keep it up. You will succeed. You cannot by any
chance fail if you persevere. It is idle to pretend that your mind is
incapable of concentration. Do you not remember that morning when you
received a disquieting letter which demanded a very carefully-worded
answer? How you kept your mind steadily on the subject of the answer,
without a second's intermission, until you reached your office;
whereupon you instantly sat down and wrote the answer? That was a case
in which _you_ were roused by circumstances to such a degree of
vitality that you were able to dominate your mind like a tyrant. You
would have no trifling. You insisted that its work should be done, and
its work was done.
By the regular practice of concentration (as to which there is no
secret--save the secret of perseverance) you can tyrannise over your
mind (which is not the highest part of _you_) every hour of the day,
and in no matter what place. The exercise is a very convenient one.
If you got into your morning train with a pair of dumb-bells for your
muscles or an encyclopaedia in ten volumes for your learning, you would
probably excite remark. But as you walk in the street, or sit in the
corner of the compartment behind a pipe, or "strap-hang" on the
Subterranean, who is to know that you are engaged in the most important
of daily acts? What asinine boor can laugh at you?
I do not care what you concentrate on, so long as you concentrate. It
is the mere disciplining of the thinking machine that counts. But
still, you may as well kill two birds with one stone, and concentrate
on something useful. I suggest--it is only a suggestion--a little
chapter of Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus.
Do not, I beg, shy at their names. For myself, I know nothing more
"actual," more bursting with plain common-sense, applicable to the
daily life of plain persons like you and me (who hate airs, pose, and
nonsense) than Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus. Read a chapter--and so
short they are, the chapters!--in the evening and concentrate on it the
next morning. You will see.
Yes, my friend, it is useless for you to try to disguise the fact. I
can hear your brain like a telephone at my ear. You are saying to
yourself: "This fellow was doing pretty well up to his seventh
chapter. He had begun to interest me faintly. But what he says about
thinking in trains, and concentration, and so on, is not for me. It
may be well enough for some folks, but it isn't in my line."
It is for you, I passionately repeat; it is for you. Indeed, you are
the very man I am aiming at.
Throw away the suggestion, and you throw away the most precious
suggestion that was ever offered to you. It is not my suggestion. It
is the suggestion of the most sensible, practical, hard-headed men who
have walked the earth. I only give it you at second-hand. Try it. Get
your mind in hand. And see how the process cures half the evils of
life--especially worry, that miserable, avoidable, shameful
disease--worry!