"Habit is a cable: we weave a thread of it each day, and it
becomes so strong we cannot break it."
HORACE MANN.
SPARE MOMENTS
The Study Habit--The Germ of Self-culture--Millions of Tiny
Cells in Our Brain--The Economic Value of the Study Habit--Two
Ways of Gaining Knowledge--Happiness in the Company of Those
Striving for Higher Ideals--A Young Wife's Incentive to
Self-culture--The Difference Between Moral and Mental
Disloyalty--The Study Habit Creates Its Own
Interest--Nosophobia, or the Dread of Disease--Keep Still and
Be Well.
THE STUDY HABIT.--Every individual differs from every other individual
according to his habits. The nature of our habits fixes our status in
the struggle of life. If we get into the habit of thinking evil
thoughts, we live in that atmosphere. Health is a habit, so also is
success. Honesty, virtue, vice, procrastination, contentment,
fault-finding, grumbling, candy eating, gossiping, drinking, sleeping,
religion, friends, life itself, are habits. Life is what we make it. "As
the man thinketh in his heart, so he is." Some habits are good, others
are bad. Certain habits are constructive, others are destructive. If we
get into the habit of doing our work thoroughly and regularly, according
to some definite system, we encourage the habits of contentment,
calmness, efficiency, and happiness. If we do our work spasmodically,
irregularly, without system, if we gossip between times, we are
eternally trying to catch up, so we encourage the habits of
procrastination, discontent, inefficiency, fault-finding, and failure.
We must be master or victim of our habits. We must succeed, or we must
fail. The immutable law of life permits of no standing still. We are
either progressing or we are retrogressing. One of the best habits, if
not the very best, that the young wife can cultivate in her new home is
the study habit. It is eminently a constructive habit.
The germ of self-culture is latent in every healthy mind. It is an
exceedingly virile microbe. It may begin as a fad but intrinsically it
grows as a virtue. Environment may give it birth but its roots may not
be circumscribed. They seek nourishment from every far and near spring
and well, and its branches spread out to the north and south, and east
and west, and its leaves suck into its heart, health and strength and
color and fragrance, from the everlasting sun.
In our brain are millions of tiny cells. Each cell is capable of a
single thought. When we begin as children, we learn letters first, then
words, then sentences or thoughts. In due time we have a sufficient
number of cells, each with its photographed letter or word or thought.
From this stock we reason and think and plan. These are the letters and
words and thoughts of ordinary life. We have millions of cells left, and
the brain is a tireless, ceaseless worker. If we keep on feeding it more
letters, more words, more thoughts, it is satisfied, but if we stop, if
we stagnate, it keeps on working, but it can only use the words and
thoughts we have given it. Ceaselessly it rearranges these words in its
effort to live. We are feeding it nothing, its circulation becomes poor,
its vitality weak. Some day it arranges its limited number of words into
a new thought, a bad thought, our idle mind grasps the significance of
the new thought, and we give birth to a new piece of scandal, or we
commit a crime. The brain is pleased, because the execution of the new
bad impulse brought more blood, more vitality to it, and it gets the
habit of thinking bad thoughts and conveying evil impulses. They were
the product of idleness of mind. And as a matter of statistical fact,
all tragedies, crimes, vices, scandal, gossip and misery are direct
products of mental inertness or idleness.
The minds of the grumbler, the gossip, the thief, the criminal, are
poor, empty, starved, wayward minds, and their brains are small, poorly
nourished, sickly brains. The young wife with a moment of leisure who
has a starved, empty mind, is a victim of her passions, her
surroundings and her ungoverned impulses. The young wife whose brain is
being fed by the study habit, is self-contained, is master of her
impulses and her passions. The mental latitude of one is limited to
caprice, envy, discontent, hate and jealousy; the other is
light-hearted, charitable, just, contented, and happy.
Shut the two in a dungeon and the owner of the starved, empty brain will
go mad. The other will find hope in her heart, and in her brain, the
children of her thoughts will troop in, bringing solace and cheer and
courage.
From a practical standpoint the study habit has an economic value. It
preserves health and peace of mind, it enhances efficiency, it broadens
our sympathies and charities, and it unifies the home circle. It is an
easy habit to acquire, and it sustains its interest: it is inexpensive.
The Carnegie libraries, correspondence schools, the university extension
plan of lectures, etc., contribute in a large measure to its easy
acquirement, and to the success with which it may be pursued.
TWO WAYS OF GAINING KNOWLEDGE.--We gain knowledge in two ways. First, by
experience, which means mingling with people, exchanging ideas,
discussing topics, listening to lectures, sermons, talks, etc. Second,
by reading and studying. We must read and study in order to really
understand and assimilate what we learn from experience, and what we
hear discussed in lectures, sermons and talks. As soon as we become
interested in a study we begin to rise above what we may call the
everyday plane. We desire to know more, and when we know a good deal
about one subject, we want to know something about kindred subjects, so
we extend the latitude of our knowledge. It is marvelous how the habit
grows. It is not work, it is pleasure. We long for spare moments to
renew the study, and as we experience the pleasure the growth of our
mind affords, we improve in all directions. Every cell in the brain
sends out vibrant impulses, new life, new hope. Health means more, life
has a meaning. We find happiness in the company of those who are
striving for higher ideals. We perform even our menial tasks with more
care and with more interest, because we grasp their true meaning, and
we know that we cannot aspire to higher ideals if we are dishonest in
little things. So the study habit makes better men and better women of
us, and it adds to the pleasure of life all the real pleasure there is
in living. The power to analyze, to conceive, and to create are the
highest pleasures mankind possesses, and they can only be attained in
any degree by education and cultivation.
It is not easy to explain to the average superficially educated person
the satisfaction to be derived from original or creative thinking. One
must progress far enough in mental self-culture before it becomes a
pleasure, almost an intoxication. Up to a certain point the acquirement
of knowledge is a task, an effort, a seeming self-sacrifice; beyond that
point it is a labor of love, a pleasure, a consecration. The crude,
discordant efforts of a child, when it first begins to acquire a musical
education, very convincingly illustrates the condition of mind of the
beginner in self-culture. The task is a toil and the results do not
stimulate further spontaneous effort. The same child, however, may
successfully pass through the various gradations of a musical career and
arrive at a time when effort will submerge itself; when the result of
the knowledge acquired will be so gratifying that it will no longer be a
toil; when the study will be pursued because of the actual pleasure it
affords.
The only worthwhile thing in life is mind. If one does not develop the
mind, it is possible to live an entire lifetime and not really live at
all. To exist is not to live. All the amenities of life contribute to
existence, not to life itself. To live is to create, to give, to endow.
If a book contains one original thought, it will live. Few books contain
more than one thought, one inspiration. If it, however, suffuses that
one thought into the hearts of men its existence will have been
justified. We have no criterion or standard by which to judge the
ethical value of a thought. If a thought conveys an inspiration to
another and is productive of moral growth it has life and value because
it creates.
To exist is to blindly follow the primal instincts. To live is to
think, to reason, to grow mentally. Consequently we must have ideals, we
must cling tenaciously to these ideals, and, "We must know what we
want."
THE YOUNG WIFE'S INCENTIVE TO SELF-CULTURE.--A young wife has a real
incentive to self-culture if she hopes to maintain her position in the
home and in the affection of her husband. A man has always the advantage
of being actively engaged in one of the two ways of acquiring knowledge.
He mingles with people. He gains considerable knowledge and frequently
cultivation unwittingly. He grows with his business, and as it increases
he becomes more important in the community. He mingles with keener,
wide-awake business men, his wits are sharpened, his brain must be alert
and virile. A healthy active brain grows, it is responsive, it absorbs
knowledge. As he climbs higher, he wears off the crude corners and
assumes a worldly cultivation, which men of sound business sense can
adapt to suit any social exigency. The wife does not have these
advantages, and, unless she appreciates this point, she is very apt to
remain where she was when she married, so far as mental culture is
concerned. Now to be wife in a true sense, she must be companion. She
must keep pace with his prosperity on the one hand and with his
intelligence on the other. The more culture and knowledge a man attains
the more critical he becomes, the more cultivated his tastes, the more
cultivation he demands. Qualities that did not always grate upon his
sensibilities become acutely objectionable in his higher mental state. A
man may be loyal at heart, but he resents the inaptitude of a wife who
fails to keep the mental pace. He is willing to give his wife the
benefits of his material prosperity, but he cannot give her the finer
evidences of his higher mentality, because, while she may have proved
true as a wife, she failed as a companion. She fell behind in culture.
He cannot give that which she cannot receive. The young wife should
appreciate the difference between moral disloyalty on the part of her
husband, and mental disloyalty. He is the transgressor in the first, and
she is the culprit in the second delinquency. We must meet a situation
as it exists. Moralizing does not change the conditions. A man and
woman may be temperamentally suited to each other to-day, and in a few
years may be wholly dissimilar in tastes. If being a wife simply implied
more loyalty and domestic efficiency there could be no just cause for
complaint if she failed in every other respect, but it does not. To be a
wife more than in name, one must be friend, companion, confidant. No
one, much less a husband, selects as a friend, companion, and confidant,
an individual whose tastes are not in sympathy with his own, who does
not understand the viewpoint, one in whom he cannot confide, or one
whose intelligence is crude. A man can obtain a housekeeper anywhere,
but he cannot buy a home-maker, a companion, a friend, or a confidant.
The study habit will create the interest. If you once get it, only death
can take it from you. If you become interested, no man can grow away
from you, and no man can take from you the worlds it will open up. You
must, however, begin the study habit with the determination to acquire
knowledge. You must want intensely to succeed, and you must be willing
to sacrifice self, and to work diligently. "If you quit, it simply shows
you did not want an education, you only thought you did,--you are not
willing to pay the price."
NOSOPHOBIA, OR THE DREAD OF DISEASE.--There is one disease I would warn
the young wife not to acquire. It is called nosophobia. It is without
doubt the most serious sickness with which any member of the human
family may be afflicted.
In another part of this book I have written the story of the aged
philosopher, who, on being asked to name the worst troubles he had in
life, answered, "I am quite sure my greatest worries, and my worst
troubles were those that never happened." This reply is well worth
thinking about; it contains matter for serious reflection, and what
makes it so suggestive and valuable is that it can be proved true by the
experience of our own lives.
Nosophobia means dread of disease. It may astonish many to know that
such a condition is regarded as a disease, and that it has been given a
name. Instead, however, of it being a rare disease, or an unusual
condition, we find it is one of the commonest diseases, and one of the
most easily acquired conditions. In fact, it is so easily acquired
nowadays that we have to be constantly on guard against it. Though we
may not be its victim, we have all felt its influence at some time, and
even one experience of it is sufficient to satisfy the most exacting. It
is an absolute medical fact, that the dread of disease will render one
more profoundly miserable and unhappy, and will cause more mental and
physical incompetents than will any severe, prolonged, actual sickness.
People who are victims of nosophobia are probably the most miserable and
wretched individuals on earth. This is essentially so because of the
peculiar characteristics of the disease. It is an insinuating and
insidious ailment and its progress is cumulative. When we begin to worry
about our health the germ of nosophobia takes up its habitation in our
midst and we never know another happy moment.
The dread of disease is probably more common now than it used to be,
partly because people know more about it, and, therefore, have more
material out of which to manufacture dreads, and partly because a large
number of people have the leisure to worry about various symptoms and
sensations that come to them, and the significance of which they
exaggerate by dwelling on them until they become positive torments. It
is particularly those who have not much to do, and, above all, those who
have absolutely nothing to do who suffer most from the affection.
Children never suffer from this malady because pains and aches have no
significance to them. The probability of death through sickness never
bothers them. Their minds are always occupied. They are always busy,
they think only of life and of living. As we grow older, however, we
become introspective and we permit conditions to favor the development
of a wrong mental attitude. We accentuate the seriousness of each
trifling pain and illness, and the specter of death looms up in the path
of each ailment. Soon we spend needless time in worry and we imagine we
are not as healthy as we ought to be and that we may probably die in the
near future. This affects our temperament and our efficiency. Life is
no longer tolerable or attractive, and we shortly are numbered with the
failures and the incompetents.
One of the unfortunate consequences of nosophobia is that a victim of it
not only renders her own life miserable, but she unfortunately affects
the happiness of every member of the household. She is as a rule gloomy
and morose, and this constant depressive environment is not conducive to
the success of any effort toward creating moments of amusement and
happiness. Her presence acts as a deterrent and repeated failures to
overcome this domestic cloud finally result in a complete cessation of
all effort. Things fall into a rut and each member of the family seek
their various forms of diversion outside the home circle.
These individuals are sometimes spoken of as "trouble seekers." In a
sense, the term is appropriate, because the troubles which wreck their
peace of mind never occur. In the beginning there is usually some slight
physical ailment. As a rule, it is some form of nervous indigestion.
Under appropriate and adequate treatment such forms of indigestion are
readily curable in ordinary individuals, but these patients are not
ordinary individuals. They are perverse and opinionated. They have their
own ideas. It is impossible to convince them that they are not as sick
as they imagine. They think the physician fails to quite comprehend
their cases,--that he does not recognize the serious side of the
ailment, and so they are never wholly satisfied with medical assistance.
The little incidental pains of the indigestion are indications of heart
disease to such a patient and she acts in sympathy with this awful
affliction; the real explanation being that the gas produced by the
indigestion bothers the heart for the time being. She is very apt to
diet as a consequence, one article after another being avoided until she
is living on a starvation diet. She fails to appreciate the fact that
she needs more nourishment, not less; that her stomach is in good
condition, the fault being with her nerves. She finally becomes anemic
and neurasthenic and a misanthrope.
The young wife can readily appreciate that, to expect domestic success
and happiness under such circumstances, would be impossible. Yet there
are young wives who develop this habit of accentuating their little
pains and ailments inordinately, to their husbands, on every occasion.
They adopt this dangerous means of exciting extra sympathy and
caressing. Some do it in explanation of their failure to perform their
household duties efficiently--a laziness plea pure and simple.
These inefficient and tricky little ladies find that it is easy to
impose upon their unsuspecting husbands, so they proceed to work out the
details to their own satisfaction. After spending the day sight-seeing
or shopping or gossiping, and having neglected their work and feeling
tired, they assume a becomingly abandoned position on the big, new,
comfortable couch, practice a few heartbreaking sighs and experiment
with the tear supply. These details are arranged and timed to be
effective just as Jack opens the hall door with the latchkey. We can
picture what follows without making any effort to dramatize the
incident. But if the reader will try to create mental pictures of the
frequently recurring home-comings under the same circumstances, she will
develop interesting studies in domestic psychology as she watches the
effect upon Jack when the truth begins to dawn upon him.
It needs no oracle to assure these women that they are traveling along a
road that has only one ending. Love is as old as the hills, and the
older it gets, like the wise old hills, a wiser old love it becomes. It
exacts its price, and its price is an equal love. There never was a love
born--except maternal love--that will sustain itself after the knowledge
dawns upon it that it is being bartered away and imposed upon. The day
of reckoning comes in time and the dream is over.
Do not forget that the first year of married life is the trial year--the
real test of your soul-merit. During that first year you carve, as it
were, on a monument, in a thousand different ways, the ineffaceable
record of whether you deserve success and happiness in the struggle of
life. In what should be the after-glow of love's young dream--the first
precious weeks and months as a young wife--no element will be more
subtly dangerous than the art of duplicity. Before a young wife
determines to practice deception she should fully appreciate the
inevitable consequences. If, under the mistaken idea that she can easily
deceive her husband, because "he trusts me so," she believes she may
continue to do so with impunity, she is the most elementary of all silly
little fools. She has failed to observe that the great law of the
universe acts in the interest of the rich and poor, the fool and the
philosopher alike. She will become too clever and like all fools and
criminals she will give herself away. She will wake up to find that she
has been playing with the sacred things of earth--home and a husband's
love; that, never again can she reestablish the affection and confidence
which she has trampled upon and defiled; that the future is a mortgaged
hope and she herself an unclean and unworthy thing.
Practicing the art of duplicity in simulating physical ailments will, if
persisted in, establish nosophobia. The patient will come to believe
that she is not exactly well. She will establish the habit of feeling
sick. This will render her mind diseased and the diseased mind will in
turn suggest new and additional aches and pains, and she will soon not
know whether she is sick or well. The dread of disease will effect its
retribution and soon she will be, in fact, an unhappy and an
unsuccessful young wife.
Modern conditions unfortunately favor the easy development of nosophobia
in young wives. Our larger knowledge of the symptoms of diseased
conditions tends to render the analysis of localized pain more
definitely and more suggestively. Certain pains, we are told by hearsay
busybodies, mean certain serious conditions, and the category of these
diseases extends from indigestion to consumption and to cancer. To the
victim of nosophobia this suggestive knowledge is a constant terror and
an ever present nightmare. To the normal healthy mind they mean nothing
and suggest less.
The modern young housewife has a superabundance of spare time. The
utilization of the young wife's spare time is of the most momentous
importance as we have previously pointed out. It is the one commodity
which will speak in the after years in words of solace and cheer or in
regret and condemnation--according to how these precious moments are
spent. If these moments are not spent in a way best fitted to wholly
occupy the mind, the mental attitude--to which we previously referred,
and which is conducive to the cultivation of nosophobia--will have been
developed.
There are certain kindred conditions that may partly explain, to the
ordinary healthy person, the real distress of mind into which these
self-centered sufferers sink. The fear of a thunder storm, for example,
creates profound dread and distress of mind in some people. The dread of
dirt, of sharp instruments, of certain insects and animals, of darkness,
of an ocean voyage, and of great heights, are common examples of this
type of mind-distress of which the characteristic symptom is an
inexplicable and uncontrollable dread. The same system of
self-discipline and self-control is necessary to effect a cure of these
various forms of mind-distress as is necessary in the successful
treatment of dread of disease. To none of these other forms, however, is
attached the same degree of seriousness by the laity as they attach
unjustly to nosophobia. The conditions are all the same, but they reason
that the dread of darkness or dirt or mice or height cannot possibly
bring death or seriously affect the health or happiness, while sickness
and the dread of it, means--so they imagine--pain and maybe death.
Medically, nosophobia has no such significance. The condition exists
only in the mind and the same effort at self-discipline will cure the
dread of disease as well as the dread of any other possible condition.
It is this element of mind, however, that lends itself to the cure of
this condition by other means than legitimate medical advice and so we
have had "healers" and "miracle workers" who have sprung up from time to
time in the history of the world, who have cleverly taken advantage of
this element in human nature, and reaped a rich reward.
"KEEP STILL AND BE WELL."--To instruct the young wife how she may guard
against acquiring this habit, we would suggest that she "keep still and
be well."
When the world appreciates better the psychology of thought, its
tremendous significance will have a concrete meaning. We are too apt to
regard the thought we give utterance to as a meaningless thing, so far
as its influence is concerned. The woman who harps upon her ailments,
who appears at the breakfast table with a depressed and melancholy
visage, who regales us with an account of how poorly she slept, the
nightmares she experienced, the pain she suffers, and who puts into her
inflection the poison of self-pity is an emissary of Satan. I have seen
a whole family's happiness for the day destroyed by the meaningless
ranting of a hysterical woman. Life is hard enough for all, for each of
us to at least wish each other well.
The individual who cultivates the habit of carrying sunshine and good
cheer to the breakfast table belongs to the sort of folk who help and
inspire the whole world to a greater achievement. If one is sent away
each morning from home with a cheery word and a radiant good-by he is
inspired with the virtue of success and his efficiency is ensured.
Cultivate the art of contentment and remember that relationship does not
imply liberty; you have no right to send out into the world a member of
your family depressed and miserable because of your irritability and
evil habits.
"Keep still and be well." If you cannot say a good word about a
fellow-being, say none at all. Don't become a scandal-monger. We can
forgive those who talk evil about us--they talk to hear themselves talk.
The gossip germ is born of ignorance and vacuity and breeds best in idle
minds. No one is influenced by the vaporings of a gossip, her words die
in empty air. She injures herself only. The loquacious pest who brings
to us the tales which the scandal-monger manufactures is the one who
robs us of our peace and is unforgivable. To dignify the malicious
intentions and idle nothings of an evil mind by carrying them further is
an expression of degeneracy that is urgently in need of active
disinfection. To vilify another is foolish; to repeat it, is the
function of a rogue. Your friends bring you the glad tidings of the good
things that are said about you: your enemies are those who, in the holy
name of friendship, bring to you the poison of evil gossip. "Keep still
and be well."
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