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Of course, there is another side to this. The real is not merely
rigorous and precarious. It is also often better than we think.
Imagination is sometimes morbid. People allow themselves to be beset
by fears that better understanding would soon prove slenderer or
even groundless. Everyone knows, I suppose, the little verse of
rhymed wisdom which runs as follows:
"As I was going up the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there;
He wasn't there again today--
O, how I wish he'd go away!"
A great many fears--anxious fears--fall into that category. They are
based upon such things as other people's opinions (often people
whose opinions don't count, anyway), on hypochondriac obsessions
with imaginary illness, on a feeling of persecution, or neglect, on
a far-off threat of poverty--on a hundred things of an infinitely
varied sort, none of which is especially likely to be actual.
Discover the realities, then! Face the realities! You cannot live
your life of ten years hence today. You cannot live your life of one
year hence today. You cannot live your life of tomorrow today. But
you can live today. And you will be happier if, for whatever belongs
to yourself, you live with modest expectations, for whatever exceeds
them is that much extra happiness. You have no claim--remember it
always!--everything that comes to you comes of grace and bounty.
Accept it joyfully but don't clutch it too tightly. Face the
realities. Develop a clear recognition of life's natural
adventurousness and make the most of it.
The second principle is: Be energetic about the possibilities: and
ONLY about the possibilities. Altogether too much energy and effort
is expended upon impossibilities. Thus anxiety is intensified by
frustration. Many a man has wasted his life trying to make it more
secure than it can possibly be made. Many a woman has wasted her
life trying to make her family safer than any family can possibly
become. Remember that other people deserve to take some risks.
Remember that you cannot get rid of risks yourself. Concentrate upon
what is possible. Try to find out exactly what it is--not too much
in haste, certainly not in panic, but candidly and steadily--and
then, when you know, work at it. You may not be able to go precisely
where you originally wanted to go; the world may not be the kind of
world you used to think it was; all that is dear to you in it may
not be available to your protection; but still, you can go somewhere
and with credit and satisfaction; and the world may turn out to be
doing better than you thought, after all. As for what is dear to
you, it may survive without your protection; and if not, you will
find the courage that millions of others have found. Fit yourself
into the actual opportunities; those you truly have or can really
make. If you fail to do so by seeking the impossible, you will lose
everything--including all the natural joy of life.
We can truly say that running after the impossible brings on anxiety
states more swiftly and more terribly than anything else. It can
cause actual neurosis. It can produce embitterment. It is not true
that we can have everything, do anything, achieve whatever we want
to. Live, then, with the possible; cultivate the possible; find
happiness in it and development and fulfillment. Do not succumb to
the anxiety--the preventable anxiety--that disables us unnecessarily
but completely, and paralyzes all useful effort.
The third principle is: Accept the inevitabilities. What nothing can
be done about, should be accepted candidly and freely. We must not
wait until it thrusts itself upon us as a crushing blow. Not many
inevitabilities are intolerable. What is intolerable is anxiety
about inevitabilities which are not accepted as such. I need hardly
say that I am not advising inertia. I am not thinking of an indolent
person's "inevitabilities" at all. I am thinking of such
inevitabilities as the world of peril that we live in; and the world
of change which hurries itself upon us. I am thinking also of
inevitabilities in the more narrowly personal life. "No man," said
Jesus, "by being anxious can add one inch to his stature." If it
cannot be done, do not fret yourself into a nervous breakdown trying
to do it. And of course, Jesus was not concerned with mere physical
height; he had in mind everything that cannot be changed no matter
what we do about it--things that have to be accepted. And in the
present world, there are many of them. To the inevitable it is best
to bow--and, in its presence, to come at last to smile.
I think those are three pretty good rules--and quite practical. The
more I have had recourse to them in my own life, the more I have
come to see their worth. Face the realities; be energetic about the
possibilities--and only the possibilities; accept the
inevitabilities, freely frankly, and courageously. This may not
banish anxiety--no--but it will cut down its power to thwart us and
impede us; it will stop anxiety from eating into our hearts. It will
give us some relief, something of mastery. And we can do these
things--measurably--simply by trying; by beginning to do them and
then going on doing them. Gradually, they become part of our life
and we look out on the world with new recognition and insight.
I sometimes think I can identify the people who have this
outlook--have it in a robust way--almost on sight. They do not have
a hunted look. They have s special sort of laugh--or at least a
smile. You know instinctively that in an emergency they would have
strength. The strength that comes from wisdom and courage
intermingled. It is very hard to put them out of countenance. They
are almost free from pretense. If they do any pretending at all, it
is for your sake, not their own. Within themselves, they are frank.
They have met reality on its own terms. They are at peace with the
truth of things. When they have to let go, they do so rather simply.
When they hold on, they do it patiently and confidently. Perhaps it
is just this, after all, when carried far enough, that makes a sage
or a saint. It is a total personal quality--and it comes with the
mastering of anxiety. Of course, a great deal more could be said
about it than this--but this is enough for the moment. It is the
path to that deeper, truer kind of mastery: the mastery that looks
at all the flashy sorts of achievement with a half-merry,
half-pitying smile. Yet, it keeps a wary eye for pitfalls, knowing
that no understanding and no mastery can ever be complete.
These three rules, then--these and a fourth. For though these rules
are good, as I believe, I would not want to offer them alone. There
is a fourth. To master anxiety, or anything else whatever, a man
must live for something bigger than himself. Anxiety mainly comes
from "I--me--mine." If we ourselves are all that life can hold of
worth--all that is precious to us--then we are doomed before we
start. We must get farther away from self-centered living. Live for
other people--yes--and for the difficult but essential aims of the
better world that we are trying to build. Just as the great artist
becomes absorbed less in himself and more in his art, and as the
true scientist devotes himself less to his fame and more to his
quest, so must all men give themselves to what is more than they
are--to the uttermost beyond them and the power of life within
them--to the spirit of the highest and to God.
That is what we must do if we are ever to move in from the outer
court of life's temple to its inner sanctuary. And when we do, we
can subordinate the rest--for everything falls into its own place.
We do not clutch at life so fiercely when we feel that greater life
has got its grip on us. For we belong, then, to the ultimate, to the
invincible. We do not try to take it with us our way; we are ready
to go with it, its way. I said a while ago that all was
insecure--nothing was dependable. In the context that I spoke from
then, what I said was true. But I speak now from a different
context. I have raised the sights a little. And in the final sense,
the sense which the soul knows by its own insight and experience, a
great deal is dependable--indeed, everything that matters. Here is
something that a preacher cannot give to you by preaching. It comes
from living--brave, patient, indomitable living...When we come to
know at last what it was that ancient men felt in their hearts when
they cried out, "Into thy hands, O God," we know why all anxiety is
needless. And between the mystery beyond us and the mystery within
us, there is peace.
Prayer: O God, who committest to us the swift and solemn trust of
life, reconsecrate us by the worship of this hour to the faith that
is stronger than circumstance, to the hope that cannot be dimmed and
to the love that never fails. Amen.
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