Part Two In A Nutshell 2 страница

few seconds.

" I kept up this programme for about three months. I had broken the habit of worry by

that time, so I returned to a normal working day of seven or eight hours. This event

occurred eighteen years ago. I have never been troubled with insomnia or worry since

then. "

George Bernard Shaw was right. He summed it all up when he said: " The secret of being

miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. " So don't

bother to think about it! Spit on your hands and get busy. Your blood will start

circulating; your mind will start ticking -and pretty soon this whole positive upsurge of

life in your body will drive worry from your mind. Get busy. Keep busy. It's the cheapest

kind of medicine there is on this earth-and one of the best.

To break the worry habit, here is Rule 1:

Keep busy. The worried person must lose himself in action, lest be wither in despair.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter 7 - Don't Let the Beetles Get You Down

Here is a dramatic story that I'll probably remember as long as I live. It was told to me

by Robert Moore, of 14 Highland Avenue, Maplewood, New Jersey.

" I learned the biggest lesson of my life in March, 1945, " he said, " I learned it under 276

feet of water off the coast of Indo-China. I was one of eighty-eight men aboard the

submarine Baya S. S. 318. We had discovered by radar that a small Japanese convoy was

coming our way. As daybreak approached, we submerged to attack. I saw through the

periscope a Jap destroyer escort, a tanker, and a minelayer. We fired three torpedoes

at the destroyer escort, but missed. Something went haywire in the mechanics of each

torpedo. The destroyer, not knowing that she had been attacked, continued on. We

were getting ready to attack the last ship, the minelayer, when suddenly she turned and

came directly at us. (A Jap plane had spotted us under sixty feet of water and had

radioed our position to the Jap minelayer. ) We went down to 150 feet, to avoid

detection, and rigged for a depth charge. We put extra bolts on the hatches; and, in

order to make our sub absolutely silent, we turned off the fans, the cooling system, and

all electrical gear.

" Three minutes later, all hell broke loose. Six depth charges exploded all around us and

pushed us down to the ocean floor -a depth of 276 feet. We were terrified. To be

attacked in less than a thousand feet of water is dangerous-less than five hundred feet

is almost always fatal. And we were being attacked in a trifle more than half of five

hundred feet of water -just about knee-deep, as far as safety was concerned. For

fifteen hours, that Jap minelayer kept dropping depth charges.

If a depth charge explodes within seventeen feet of a sub, the concussion will blow a

hole in it. Scores of these depth charges exploded within fifty feet of us. We were

ordered 'to secure'- to lie quietly in our bunks and remain calm. I was so terrified I could

hardly breathe. 'This is death, ' I kept saying to myself over and over. 'This is death! ...

This is death! ' With the fans and cooling system turned off, the air inside the sub was

over a hundred degrees; but I was so chilled with fear that I put on a sweater and a fur-

lined jacket; and still I trembled with cold. My teeth chattered. I broke out in a cold,

clammy sweat. The attack continued for fifteen hours. Then ceased suddenly.

Apparently the Jap minelayer had exhausted its supply of depth charges, and steamed

away. Those fifteen hours of attack seemed like fifteen million years. All my life passed

before me in review.

I remembered all the bad things I had done, all the little absurd things I had worried

about. I had been a bank clerk before I joined the Navy. I had worried about the long

hours, the poor pay, the poor prospects of advancement. I had worried because I

couldn't own my own home, couldn't buy a new car, couldn't buy my wife nice clothes.

How I had hated my old boss, who was always nagging and scolding! I remembered how I

would come home at night sore and grouchy and quarrel with my wife over trifles. I had

worried about a scar on my forehead-a nasty cut from an auto accident.

" How big all these worries seemed years ago! But how absurd they seemed when depth

charges were threatening to blow me to kingdom come. I promised myself then and

there that if I ever saw the sun and the stars again, I would never, never worry again.

Never! Never! I Never!!! I learned more about the art of living in those fifteen terrible

hours in that submarine than I had learned by studying books for four years in Syracuse

University. "

We often face the major disasters of life bravely-and then let the trifles, the " pains in

the neck", get us down. For example, Samuel Pepys tells in his Diary about seeing Sir

Harry Vane's head chopped off in London. As Sir Harry mounted the platform, he was not

pleading for his life, but was pleading with the executioner not to hit the painful boil on

his neck!

That was another thing that Admiral Byrd discovered down in the terrible cold and

darkness of the polar nights-that his men fussed more about the ' 'pains in the neck"

than about the big things. They bore, without complaining, the dangers, the hardships,

and the cold that was often eighty degrees below zero. " But, " says Admiral Byrd, " I know

of bunkmates who quit speaking because each suspected the other of inching his gear

into the other's allotted space; and I knew of one who could not eat unless he could find

a place in the mess hall out of sight of the Fletcherist who solemnly chewed his food

twenty-eight times before swallowing.

" In a polar camp, " says Admiral Byrd, " little things like that have the power to drive even

disciplined men to the edge of insanity. "

And you might have added, Admiral Byrd, that " little things" in marriage drive people to

the edge of insanity and cause " half the heartaches in the world. "

At least, that is what the authorities say. For example, Judge Joseph Sabath of Chicago,

after acting as arbiter in more than forty thousand unhappy marriages, declared:

" Trivialities are at the bottom of most marital unhappiness"; and Frank S. Hogan, District

Attorney of New York County, says: " Fully half the cases in our criminal courts originate

in little things. Bar-room bravado, domestic wrangling, an insulting remark, a

disparaging word, a rude action-those are the little things that lead to assault and

murder. Very few of us are cruelly and greatly wronged. It is the small blows to our self-

esteem, the indignities, the little jolts to our vanity, which cause half the heartaches in

the world. "

When Eleanor Roosevelt was first married, she " worried for days" because her new cook

had served a poor meal. " But if that happened now, " Mrs. Roosevelt says, " I would shrug

my shoulders and forget it. " Good. That is acting like an adult emotionally. Even

Catherine the Great, an absolute autocrat, used to laugh the thing off when the cook

spoiled a meal.

Mrs. Carnegie and I had dinner at a friend's house in Chicago. While carving the meat, he

did something wrong. I didn't notice it; and I wouldn't have cared even if I had noticed it

But his wife saw it and jumped down his throat right in front of us. " John, " she cried,

" watch what you are doing! Can't you ever learn to serve properly! "

Then she said to us: " He is always making mistakes. He just doesn't try. " Maybe he didn't

try to carve; but I certainly give him credit for trying to live with her for twenty years.

Frankly, I would rather have eaten a couple of hot dogs with mustard-in an atmosphere

of peace-than to have dined on Peking duck and shark fins while listening to her

scolding.

Shortly after that experience, Mrs. Carnegie and I had some friends at our home for

dinner. Just before they arrived, Mrs. Carnegie found that three of the napkins didn't

" I rushed to the cook, " she told me later, " and found that the other three napkins had

gone to the laundry. The guests were at the door. There was no time to change. I felt

like bursting into tears! All I could think was: 'Why did this stupid mistake have to spoil

my whole evening? ' Then I thought-well-why let it? I went in to dinner, determined to

have a good time. And I did. I would much rather our friends think I was a sloppy

housekeeper, " she told me, " than a nervous, bad-tempered one. And anyhow, as far as I

could make out, no one noticed the napkins! "

A well-known legal maxim says: De minimis non curat lex- " the law does not concern

itself with trifles. " And neither should the worrier-if he wants peace of mind.

Much of the time, all we need to overcome the annoyance of trifles is to affect a

shifting of emphasis-set up a new, and pleasurable, point of view in the mind. My friend

Homer Croy, who wrote They Had to See Paris and a dozen other books, gives a

wonderful example of how this can be done. He used to be driven half crazy, while

working on a book, by the rattling of the radiators in his New York apartment. The

steam would bang and sizzle-and he would sizzle with irritation as he sat at his desk.

" Then, " says Homer Croy, " I went with some friends on a camping expedition. While

listening to the limbs crackling in the roaring fire, I thought how much they sounded like

the crackling of the radiators. Why should I like one and hate the other? When I went

home I said to myself: 'The crackling of the limbs in the fire was a pleasant sound; the

sound of the radiators is about the same-I'll go to sleep and not worry about the noise. '

And I did. For a few days I was conscious of the radiators; but soon I forgot all about

them.

" And so it is with many petty worries. We dislike them and get into a stew, all because

we exaggerate their importance. ... "

Disraeli said: " Life is too short to be little. " " Those words, " said Andre Maurois in This

Week magazine, " have helped me through many a painful experience: often we allow

ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget. ... Here we are on

this earth, with only a few more decades to live, and we lose many irreplaceable hours

brooding over grievances that, in a year's time, will be forgotten by us and by

everybody. No, let us devote our life to worth-while actions and feelings, to great

thoughts, real affections and enduring undertakings. For life is too short to be little. "

Even so illustrious a figure as Rudyard Kipling forgot at times that " Life is too short to be

little". The result? He and his brother-in-law fought the most famous court battle in the

history of Vermont-a battle so celebrated that a book has been written about it:

Rudyard Kipling's Vermont Feud.

The story goes like this: Kipling married a Vermont girl, Caroline Balestier, built a lovely

home in Brattleboro, Vermont; settled down and expected to spend the rest of his life

there. His brother-in-law, Beatty Balestier, became Kipling's best friend. The two of

them worked and played together.

Then Kipling bought some land from Balestier, with the understanding that Balestier

would be allowed to cut hay off it each season. One day, Balestier found Kipling laying

out a flower garden on this hayfield. His blood boiled. He hit the ceiling. Kipling fired

right back. The air over the Green Mountains of Vermont turned blue!

A few days later, when Kipling was out riding his bicycle, his brother-in-law drove a

wagon and a team of horses across the road suddenly and forced Kipling to take a spill.

And Kipling the man who wrote: " If you can keep your head when all about you are

losing theirs and blaming it on you" - he lost his own head, and swore out a warrant for

Balestier's arrest I A sensational trial followed. Reporters from the big cities poured into

the town. The news flashed around the world. Nothing was settled. This quarrel caused

Kipling and his wife to abandon their American home for the rest of their lives. All that

worry and bitterness over a mere trifle! A load of hay.

Pericles said, twenty-four centuries ago: " Come, gentlemen, we sit too long on trifles. "

We do, indeed!

Here is one of the most interesting stories that Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick ever told-a

story about the battles won and lost by a giant of the forest:

On the slope of Long's Peak in Colorado lies the ruin of 3 gigantic tree. Naturalists tell us

that it stood for some four hundred years. It was a seedling when Columbus landed at

San Salvador, and half grown when the Pilgrims settled at Plymouth. During the course

of its long life it was struck by lightning fourteen times, and the innumerable avalanches

and storms of four centuries thundered past it. It survived them all. In the end,

however, an army of beetles attacked the tree and leveled it to the ground. The insects

ate their way through the bark and gradually destroyed the inner strength of the tree by

their tiny but incessant attacks. A forest giant which age had not withered, nor lightning

blasted, nor storms subdued, fell at last before beetles so small that a man could crush

them between his forefinger and his thumb.

Aren't we all like that battling giant of the forest? Don't we manage somehow to survive

the rare storms and avalanches and lightning blasts of We, only to let our hearts be

eaten out by little beetles of worry-little beetles that could be crushed between a

finger and a thumb?

A few years ago, I travelled through the Teton National Park, in Wyoming, with Charles

Seifred, highway superintendent for the state of Wyoming, and some of his friends. We

were all going to visit the John D. Rockefeller estate in the park. But the car in which I

was riding took the wrong turn, got lost, and drove up to the entrance of the estate an

hour after the other cars had gone in. Mr. Seifred had the key that unlocked the private

gate, so he waited in the hot, mosquito-infested woods for an hour until we arrived. The

mosquitoes were enough to drive a saint insane. But they couldn't triumph over Charles

Seifred. While waiting for us, he cut a limb off an aspen tree-and made a whistle of it.

When we arrived, was he cussing the mosquitoes? No, he was playing his whistle. I have

kept that whistle as a memento of a man who knew how to put trifles in their place.

To break the worry habit before it breaks you, here is Rule 2:

Let's not allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget.

Remember " Life is too short to be little. "

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter 8 - A Law That Will Outlaw Many of Tour Worries

As a child, I grew up on a Missouri farm; and one day, while helping my mother pit

cherries, I began to cry. My mother said: " Dale, what in the world are you crying about? "

I blubbered: " I'm afraid I am going to be buried alive! "

I was full of worries in those days. When thunderstorms came, I worried for fear I would

be killed by lightning. When hard times came, I worried for fear we wouldn't have

enough to eat. I worried for fear I would go to hell when I died. I was terrified for fear

an older boy, Sam White, would cut off my big ears-as he threatened to do. I worried

for fear girls would laugh at me if I tipped my hat to them. I worried for fear no girl

would ever be willing to marry me. I worried about what I would say to my wife

immediately after we were married. I imagined that we would be married in some

country church, and then get in a surrey with fringe on the top and ride back to the

farm... but how would I be able to keep the conversation going on that ride back to the

farm? How? How? I pondered over that earth-shaking problem for many an hour as I

walked behind the plough.

As the years went by, I gradually discovered that ninety-nine per cent of the things I

worried about never happened.

For example, as I have already said, I was once terrified of lightning; but I now know

that the chances of my being killed by lightning in any one year are, according to the

National Safety Council, only one in three hundred and fifty thousand.

My fear of being buried alive was even more absurd: I don't imagine that one person in

ten million is buried alive; yet I once cried for fear of it.

One person out of every eight dies of cancer. If I had wanted something to worry about,

I should have worried about cancer -instead of being killed by lightning or being buried

alive.

To be sure, I have been talking about the worries of youth and adolescence. But many of

our adult worries are almost as absurd. You and I could probably eliminate nine-tenths

of our worries right now if we would cease our fretting long enough to discover whether,

by the law of averages, there was any real justification for our worries.

The most famous insurance company on earth-Lloyd's of London-has made countless

millions out of the tendency of everybody to worry about things that rarely happen.

Lloyd's of London bets people that the disasters they are worrying about will never

occur. However, they don't call it betting. They call it insurance. But it is really betting

based on the law of averages. This great insurance firm has been going strong for two

hundred years; and unless human nature changes, it will still be going strong fifty

centuries from now by insuring shoes and ships and sealing-wax against disasters that,

by the law of average, don't happen nearly so often as people imagine.

If we examine the law of averages, we will often be astounded at the facts we uncover.

For example, if I knew that during the next five years I would have to fight in a battle as

bloody as the Battle of Gettysburg, I would be terrified. I would take out all the life

insurance I could get. I would draw up my will and set all my earthly affairs in order. I

would say: " I'll probably never live through that battle, so I had better make the most of

the few years I have left. " Yet the facts are that, according to the law of averages, it is

just as dangerous, just as fatal, to try to live from age fifty to age fifty-five in peace-

time as it was to fight in the Battle of Gettysburg. What I am trying to say is this: in

times of peace, just as many people die per thousand between the ages of fifty and

fifty-five as were killed per thousand among the 163, 000 soldiers who fought at

Gettysburg.

I wrote several chapters of this book at James Simpson's Num-Ti-Gah Lodge, on the

shore of Bow Lake in the Canadian Rockies. While stopping there one summer, I met Mr.

and Mrs. Herbert H. Salinger, of 2298 Pacific Avenue, San Francisco. Mrs. Salinger, a

poised, serene woman, gave me the impression that she had never worried. One evening

in front of the roaring fireplace, I asked her if she had ever been troubled by worry.

" Troubled by it? " she said. " My life was almost ruined by it. Before I learned to conquer

worry, I lived through eleven years of self-made hell. I was irritable and hot-tempered. I

lived under terrific tension. I would take the bus every week from my home in San

Mateo to shop in San Francisco. But even while shopping, I worried myself into a dither:

maybe I had left the electric iron connected on the ironing board. Maybe the house had

caught fire. Maybe the maid had run off and left the children. Maybe they had been out

on their bicycles and been killed by a car. In the midst of my shopping, I would often

worry myself into a cold perspiration and rush out and take the bus home to see if

everything was all right. No wonder my first marriage ended in disaster.

" My second husband is a lawyer-a quiet, analytical man who never worries about

anything. When I became tense and anxious, he would say to me: 'Relax. Let's think this

out. ... What are you really worrying about? Let's examine the law of averages and see

whether or not it is likely to happen. '

" For example, I remember the time we were driving from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to

the Carlsbad Caverns-driving on a dirt road-when we were caught in a terrible

rainstorm.

" The car was slithering and sliding. We couldn't control it. I was positive we would slide

off into one of the ditches that flanked the road; but my husband kept repeating to me:

'I am driving very slowly. Nothing serious is likely to happen. Even if the car does slide

into the ditch, by the law of averages, we won't be hurt. ' His calmness and confidence

quieted me.

" One summer we were on a camping trip in the Touquin Valley of the Canadian Rockies.

One night we were camping seven thousand feet above sea level, when a storm

threatened to tear our tents to shreds. The tents were tied with guy ropes to a wooden

platform. The outer tent shook and trembled and screamed and shrieked in the wind. I

expected every minute to see our tent torn loose and hurled through the sky. I was

terrified! But my husband kept saying: 'Look, my dear, we are travelling with Brewster's

guides. Brewster's know what they are doing. They have been pitching tents in these

mountains for sixty years. This tent has been here for many seasons. It hasn't blown

down yet and, by the law of averages, it won't blow away tonight; and even if it does,

we can take shelter in another tent. So relax. ... I did; and I slept soundly the balance

of the night.

" A few years ago an infantile-paralysis epidemic swept over our part of California. In the

old days, I would have been hysterical. But my husband persuaded me to act calmly. We

took all the precautions we could; we kept our children away from crowds, away from

school and the movies. By consulting the Board of Health, we found out that even during

the worst infantile-paralysis epidemic that California had ever known up to that time,

only 1, 835 children had been stricken in the entire state of California. And that the

usual number was around two hundred or three hundred. Tragic as those figures are, we

nevertheless felt that, according to the law of averages, the chances of any one child

being stricken were remote.

" 'By the law of averages, it won't happen. ' That phrase has destroyed ninety per cent of

my worries; and it has made the past twenty years of my life beautiful and peaceful

beyond my highest expectations. "

General George Crook-probably the greatest Indian fighter in American history-says in

his Autobiography that " nearly all the worries and unhappiness" of the Indians " came

from their imagination, and not from reality. "

As I look back across the decades, I can see that that is where most of my worries came

from also. Jim Grant told me that that had been his experience, too. He owns the

James A. Grant Distributing Company, 204 Franklin Street, New York City. He orders

from ten to fifteen car-loads of Florida oranges and grapefruit at a time. He told me

that he used to torture himself with such thoughts as: What if there's a train wreck?

What if my fruit is strewn all over the countryside? What if a bridge collapses as my cars

are going across it? Of course, the fruit was insured; but he feared that if he didn't

deliver his fruit on time, he might risk the loss of his market. He worried so much that

he feared he had stomach ulcers and went to a doctor. The doctor told him there was

nothing wrong with him except jumpy nerves. " I saw the light then, " he said, " and began

to ask myself questions. I said to myself: 'Look here, Jim Grant, how many fruit cars

have you handled over the years? ' The answer was: 'About twenty-five thousand. ' Then I

asked myself: 'How many of those cars were ever wrecked? ' The answer was: 'Oh-maybe

five. ' Then I said to myself: 'Only five-out of twenty-five thousand? Do you know what

that means? A ratio of five thousand to one! In other words, by the law of averages,

based on experience, the chances are five thousand to one against one of your cars ever

being wrecked. So what are you worried about? '

" Then I said to myself: 'Well, a bridge may collapse! ' Then I asked myself: 'How many

cars have you actually lost from a bridge collapsing? ' The answer was-'None. ' Then I said

to myself: 'Aren't you a fool to be worrying yourself into stomach ulcers over a bridge

which has never yet collapsed, and over a railroad wreck when the chances are five

thousand to one against it! '

" When I looked at it that way, " Jim Grant told me, " I felt pretty silly. I decided then and

there to let the law of averages do the worrying for me-and I have not been troubled

with my 'stomach ulcer' since! "

When Al Smith was Governor of New York, I heard him answer the attacks of his political

enemies by saying over and over: " Let's examine the record... let's examine the record. "

Then he proceeded to give the facts. The next time you and I are worrying about what

may happen, let's take a tip from wise old Al Smith: let's examine the record and see