Some people who read this chapter are going to say: "All this talk about getting
interested in others is a lot of damn nonsense! Sheer religious pap! None of that stuff
for me! I am going to put money in my purse. I am going to grab all I can get-and grab it
now-and to hell with the other dumb clucks!"
Well, if that is your opinion, you are entitled to it; but if you are right, then all the
great philosophers and teachers since the beginning of recorded history-Jesus,
Confucius, Buddha, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Saint Francis-were all wrong. But since
you may sneer at the teachings of religious leaders, let's turn for advice to a couple of
atheists. First, let's take the late A. E. Housman, professor at Cambridge University, and
one of the most distinguished scholars of his generation. In 1936, he gave an address at
Cambridge University on "The Name and Nature of Poetry". It that address, he declared
that "the greatest truth ever uttered and the most profound moral discovery of all time
were those words of Jesus: 'He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his
life for my sake shall find it.' "
We have heard preachers say that all our lives. But Housman was an atheist, a
pessimist, a man who contemplated suicide; and yet he felt that the man who thought
only of himself wouldn't get much out of life. He would be miserable. But the man who
forgot himself in service to others would find the joy of living.
If you are not impressed by what A.E. Housman said, let's turn for advice to the most
distinguished American atheist of the twentieth century: Theodore Dreiser. Dreiser
ridiculed all religions as fairy tales and regarded life as "a tale told by an idiot, full of
sound and fury, signifying nothing." Yet Dreiser advocated the one great principle that
Jesus taught-service to others. "If he [man] is to extract any joy out of his span,"
Dreiser said, "he must think and plan to make things better not only for himself but for
others, since joy for himself depends upon his joy in others and theirs in him."
If we are going "to make things better for others"-as Dreiser advocated-let's be quick
about it. Time is a-wastin'. "I shall pass this way but once. Therefore any good that I can
do or any kindness that I can show-let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for
I shall not pass this way again."
So if you want to banish worry and cultivate peace and happiness, here is Rule 7:
Forget yourself by becoming interested in others. Do every day a good deed that will put
a smile of joy on someone's face.
~~~~
Part Four In A Nutshell -Seven Ways To Cultivate A Mental Attitude That Will Bring You
Peace And Happiness
RULE 1: Let's fill our minds with thoughts of peace, courage, health, and hope, for ' 'our
life is what our thoughts make it".
RULE 2: Let's never try to get even with our enemies, because if we do we will hurt
ourselves far more than we hurt them. Let's do as General Eisenhower does: let's never
waste a minute thinking about people we don't like.
RULE 3: A. Instead of worrying about ingratitude, let's expect it. Let's remember that
Jesus healed ten lepers in one day-and only one thanked Him. Why should we expect
more gratitude than Jesus got?
B. Let's remember that the only way to find happiness is not to expect gratitude-but to
give for the joy of giving.
C. Let's remember that gratitude is a "cultivated" trait; so if we want our children to be
grateful, we must train them to be grateful.
RULE 4: Count your blessings-not your troubles!
RULE 5: Let's not imitate others. Let's find ourselves and be ourselves, for "envy is
ignorance" and "imitation is suicide".
RULE 6: When fate hands us a lemon, let's try to make a lemonade.
RULE 7: Let's forget our own unhappiness-by trying to create a little happiness for
others. "When you are good to others, you are best to yourself."
Part Five -The Golden Rule For Conquering Worry
Chapter 19 -How My Mother And Father Conquered Worry
As I have said, I was born and brought up on a Missouri farm. Like most farmers of that
day, my parents had pretty hard scratching. My mother had been a country
schoolteacher and my father had been a farm hand working for twelve dollars a month.
Mother made not only my clothes, but also the soap with which we washed our clothes.
We rarely had any cash-except once a year when we sold our hogs. We traded our butter
and eggs at the grocery store for flour, sugar, coffee. When I was twelve years old, I
didn't have as much as fifty cents a year to spend on myself. I can still remember the
day we went to a Fourth-of-July celebration and Father gave me ten cents to spend as I
wished. I felt the wealth of the Indies was mine.
I walked a mile to attend a one-room country school. I walked when the snow was deep
and the thermometer shivered around twenty-eight degrees below zero. Until I was
fourteen, I never had any rubbers or overshoes. During the long, cold winters, my feet
were always wet and cold. As a child I never dreamed that anyone had dry, warm feet
during the winter.
My parents slaved sixteen hours a day, yet we constantly were oppressed by debts and
harassed by hard luck. One of my earliest memories is watching the flood waters of the
102 River rolling over our corn-and hayfields, destroying everything. The floods
destroyed our crops six years out of seven. Year after year, our hogs died of cholera and
we burned them. I can close my eyes now and recall the pungent odour of burning hog
flesh.
One year, the floods didn't come. We raised a bumper corn crop, bought feed cattle,
and fattened them with our corn. But the floods might just as well have drowned our
corn that year, for the price of fat cattle fell on the Chicago market; and after feeding
and fattening the cattle, we got only thirty dollars more for them than what we had
paid for them. Thirty dollars for a whole year's work!
No matter what we did, we lost money. I can still remember the mule colts that my
father bought. We fed them for three years, hired men to break them, then shipped
them to Memphis, Tennessee-and sold them for less than what we had paid for them
three years previously.
After ten years of hard, grueling work, we were not only penniless; we were heavily in
debt. Our farm was mortgaged. Try as hard as we might, we couldn't even pay the
interest on the mortgage. The bank that held the mortgage abused and insulted my
father and threatened to take his farm away from him. Father was forty-seven years
old. After more than thirty years of hard work, he had nothing but debts and
humiliation. It was more than he could take. He worried. His health broke. He had no
desire for food; in spite of the hard physical work he was doing in the field all day, he
had to take medicine to give him an appetite. He lost flesh. The doctor told my mother
that he would be dead within six months. Father was so worried that he no longer
wanted to live. I have often heard my mother say that when Father went to the barn to
feed the horses and milk the cows, and didn't come back as soon as she expected, she
would go out to the barn, fearing that she would find his body dangling from the end of
a rope. One day as he returned home from Maryville, where the banker had threatened
to foreclose the mortgage, he stopped his horses on a bridge crossing the 102 River, got
off the wagon, and stood for a long time looking down at the water, debating with
himself whether he should jump in and end it all.
Years later, Father told me that the only reason he didn't jump was because of my
mother's deep, abiding, and joyous belief that if we loved God and kept His
commandments everything would come out all right. Mother was right. Everything did
come out all right in the end. Father lived forty-two happy years longer, and died in
1941, at the age of eighty-nine.
During all those years of struggle and heartache, my mother never worried. She took all
her troubles to God in prayer. Every night before we went to bed, Mother would read a
chapter from the Bible; frequently Mother or Father would read these comforting words
of Jesus: "In my Father's house are many mansions. ... I go to prepare a place for you ...
that where I am, there ye may be also." Then we all knelt down before our chairs in that
lonely Missouri farmhouse and prayed for God's love and protection.
When William James was professor of philosophy at Harvard, he said: "Of course, the
sovereign cure for worry is religious faith."
You don't have to go to Harvard to discover that. My mother found that out on a Missouri
farm. Neither floods nor debts nor disaster could suppress her happy, radiant, and
victorious spirit. I can still hear her singing as she worked:
Peace, peace, wonderful peace,
Flowing down from the Father above,
Sweep over my spirit for ever I pray
In fathomless billows of love.
My mother wanted me to devote my life to religious work. I thought seriously of
becoming a foreign missionary. Then I went away to college; and gradually, as the years
passed, a change came over me. I studied biology, science, philosophy, and comparative
religions. I read books on how the Bible was written. I began to question many of its
assertions. I began to doubt many of the narrow doctrines taught by the country
preachers of that day. I was bewildered. Like Walt Whitman, I "felt curious, abrupt
questionings stir within me". I didn't know what to believe. I saw no purpose in life. I
stopped praying. I became an agnostic.
I believed that all life was planless and aimless. I believed that human beings had no
more divine purpose than had the dinosaurs that roamed the earth two hundred million
years ago. I felt that some day the human race would perish-just as the dinosaurs had. I
knew that science taught that the sun was slowly cooling and that when its temperature
fell even ten per cent, no form of life could exist on earth. I sneered at the idea of a
beneficent God who had created man in His own likeness. I believed that the billions
upon billions of suns whirling through black, cold, lifeless space had been created by
blind force. Maybe they had never been created at all. Maybe they existed for ever-just
as time and space have always existed.
Do I profess to know the answers to all these questions now? No. No man has ever been
able to explain the mystery of the universe-the mystery of life. We are surrounded by
mysteries. The operation of your body is a profound mystery. So is the electricity in your
home. So is the flower in the crannied wall. So is the green grass outside your window.
Charles F. Kettering, the guiding genius of General Motors Research Laboratories, has
been giving Antioch College thirty thousand dollars a year out of his own pocket to try
to discover why grass is green. He declares that if we knew how grass is able to
transform sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into food sugar, we could transform
civilisation.
Even the operation of the engine in your car is a profound mystery. General Motors
Research Laboratories have spent years of time and millions of dollars trying to find out
how and why a spark in the cylinder sets off an explosion that makes your car run; and
they don't know the answer.
The fact that we don't understand the mysteries of our bodies or electricity or a gas
engine doesn't keep us from using and enjoying them. The fact that I don't understand
the mysteries of prayer and religion no longer keeps me from enjoying the richer,
happier life that religion brings. At long last, I realise the wisdom of Santayana's words:
"Man is not made to understand life, but to live it."
I have gone back-well, I was about to say that I had gone back to religion; but that
would not be accurate. I have gone forward to a new concept of religion. I no longer
have the faintest interest in the differences in creeds that divide the Churches. But I am
tremendously interested in what religion does for me, just as I am interested in what
electricity and good food and water do for me. They help me to lead a richer, fuller,
happier life. But religion does far more than that. It brings me spiritual values. It gives
me, as William James puts it, "a new zest for life ... more life, a larger, richer, more
satisfying life." It gives me faith, hope, and courage. It banishes tensions, anxieties,
fears, and worries. It gives purpose to my life-and direction. It vastly improves my
happiness. It gives me abounding health. It helps me to create for myself "an oasis of
peace amidst the whirling sands of life".
Francis Bacon was right when he said, three hundred and fifty years ago: "A little
philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's
minds about to religion."
I can remember the days when people talked about the conflict between science and
religion. But no more. The newest of all sciences-psychiatry-is teaching what Jesus
taught. Why? Because psychiatrists realise that prayer and a strong religious faith will
banish the worries, the anxieties, the strains and fears that cause more than half of all
our ills. They know, as one of their leaders, Dr. A. A. Brill said: "Anyone who is truly
religious does not develop a neurosis."
If religion isn't true, then life is meaningless. It is a tragic farce.
I interviewed Henry Ford a few years prior to his death. Before I met him, I had
expected him to show the strains of the long years he had spent in building up and
managing one of the world's greatest businesses. So I was surprised to how calm and
well and peaceful he looked at seventy-eight. When I asked him if he ever worried, he
replied: "No. I believe God is managing affairs and that He doesn't need any advice from
me. With God in charge, I believe that every-thing will work out for the best in the end.
So what is there to worry about?"
Today, even psychiatrists are becoming modern evangelists. They are not urging us to
lead religious lives to avoid hell-fires in the next world, but they are urging us to lead
religious lives to avoid the hell-fires of this world-the hell-fires of stomach ulcer, angina
pectoris, nervous breakdowns, and insanity. As an example of what our psychologists
and psychiatrists are teaching, read The Return to Religion, by Dr. Henry C. Link. You
will probably find a copy in your public library.
Yes, the Christian religion is an inspiring, health-giving activity. Jesus said: "I came that
ye might have life and have it more abundantly." Jesus denounced and attacked the dry
forms and dead rituals that passed for religion in His day. He was a rebel. He preached a
new kind of religion-a religion that threatened to upset the world. That is why He was
crucified. He preached that religion should exist for man-not man for religion; that the
Sabbath was made for man-not man for the Sabbath. He talked more about fear than
He did about sin. The wrong kind of fear is a sin-a sin against your health, a sin against
the richer, fuller, happier, courageous life that Jesus advocated. Emerson spoke of
himself as a "Professor of the Science of Joy". Jesus, too, was a teacher of "the Science
of Joy". He commanded His disciples to "rejoice and leap for joy".
Jesus declared that there were only two important things about religion: loving God
with all our heart, and our neighbour as ourselves. Any man who does that is religious,
regardless of whether he knows it. For example, my father-in-law, Henry Price, of
Tulsa, Oklahoma. He tries to live by the golden rule; and he is incapable of doing
anything mean, selfish, or dishonest. However, he doesn't attend church, and regards
himself as an agnostic. Nonsense! What makes a man a Christian? I'll let John Baillie
answer that. He was probably the most distinguished professor who ever taught theology
at the University of Edinburgh. He said: "What makes a man a Christian is neither his
intellectual acceptance of certain ideas, nor his conformity to a certain rule, but his
possession of a certain Spirit, and his participation in a certain Life."
If that makes a man a Christian, then Henry Price is a noble one.
William James-the father of modern psychology-wrote to his friend, Professor Thomas
Davidson, saying that as the years went by, he found himself "less and less able to get
along without God".
Earlier in this book I mentioned that when the judges tried to pick the best story on
worry sent in by my students, they had so much difficulty in choosing between two
outstanding stories that the prize money was split. Here is the second story that tied for
first prize-the unforgettable experience of a woman who had to find out the hard way
that "she couldn't get along without God".
I am calling this woman Mary Cushman, although that is not her actual name. She has
children and grandchildren who might be embarrassed to see her story in print, so I
agreed to disguise her identity. However, the woman herself is real-very real. A few
months ago, she sat in the armchair beside my desk and told me her story. Here is how
it goes:
"During the depression," she said, "my husband's average salary was eighteen dollars a
week. Many times we didn't have even that because he didn't get paid when he was illand
that was often. He had a series of minor accidents; he also had mumps, scarlet
fever, and repeated attacks of flu. We lost the little house that we had built with our
own hands. We owed fifty dollars at the grocery store-and had five children to feed. I
took in washing and ironing from the neighbours, and bought second-hand clothes from
the Salvation Army store and made them over for my children to wear. I made myself ill
with worry. One day the grocer to whom we owed fifty dollars accused my eleven-yearold
boy of stealing a couple of pencils.
My son wept as he told me about it. I knew he was honest and sensitive-and I knew that
he had been disgraced and humiliated in front of other people. That was the straw that
broke my back. I thought of all the misery we had endured; and I couldn't see any hope
for the future. I must have become temporarily insane with worry, for I shut off my
washing machine, took my little five-year-old daughter into the bedroom, and plugged
up the windows and cracks with paper and rags. My little girl said to me: 'Mommy, what
are you doing?' and I answered: There's a little draught in here.' Then I turned on the gas
heater we had in the bedroom-and didn't light it. As I lay down on the bed with my
daughter beside me, she said: 'Mommy, this is funny-we just got up a little while ago!'
But I said: 'Never mind, we'll take a little nap.'
Then I closed my eyes, listening to the gas escape from the heater. I shall never forget
the smell of that gas. ...
"Suddenly I thought I heard music. I listened. I had forgotten to turn the radio off in the
kitchen. It didn't matter now. But the music kept on, and presently I heard someone
singing an old hymn:
What a Friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and grief's to bear!
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer.
Oh, what peace we often forfeit
Oh, what needless pain we bear
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer!
"As I listened to that hymn, I realised that I had made a tragic mistake. I had tried to
fight all my terrible battles alone. I had not taken everything to God in prayer. ... I
jumped up, turned off the gas, opened the door, and raised the windows.
"I wept and prayed all the rest of that day. Only I didn't pray for help-instead I poured
out my soul in thanksgiving to God for the blessings He had given me: five splendid
children-all of them healthy and fine, strong in body and mind. I promised God that
never again would I prove so ungrateful. And I have kept that promise.
"Even after we lost our home, and had to move into a little country schoolhouse that we
rented for five dollars a month, I thanked God for that schoolhouse; I thanked Him for
the fact that I at least had a roof to keep us warm and dry. I thanked God honestly that
things were not worse-and I believe that He heard me. For in time things improved-oh,
not overnight; but as the depression lightened, we made a little more money. I got a job
as a hat-check girl in a large country club, and sold stockings as a side line. To help put
himself through college, one of my sons got a job on a farm, milked thirteen cows
morning and night. Today my children are grown up and married; I have three fine
grandchildren. And, as I look back on that terrible day when I turned on the gas, I thank
God over and over that I 'woke up' in time. What joys I would have missed if I had
carried out that act! How many wonderful years I would have forfeited for ever!
Whenever I hear now of someone who wants to end his life, I feel like crying out: 'Don't
do it! Don't!' The blackest moments we live through can only last a little time-and then
comes the future. ..."
On the average, someone commits suicide in the United States every thirty-five
minutes. On the average, someone goes insane every hundred and twenty seconds. Most
of these suicides-and probably many of the tragedies of insanity-could have been
prevented if these people had only had the solace and peace that are found in religion
and prayer.
One of the most distinguished psychiatrists living, Dr. Carl Jung, says in his book Modern
Man in Search of a Soul (*):
"During the past thirty years, people from all the civilised countries of the earth have
consulted me. I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among all my patients in the
second half of life-that is to say, over thirty-five-there has not been one whose problem
in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that
every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age
have given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not
regain his religious outlook."
That statement is so significant I want to repeat it in bold type.
Dr. Carl Jung said:
"During the past thirty years, people from all the civilised countries of the earth have
consulted me. I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among all my patients in the
second half of hie-that is to say, over thirty-five-there has not been one whose problem
in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that
every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age
have given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not
regain his religious outlook."
[*] Kegar Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd.
William James said approximately the same thing: "Faith is one of the forces by which
men live," he declared, "and the total absence of it means collapse."
The late Mahatma Gandhi, the greatest Indian leader since Buddha, would have
collapsed if he had not been inspired by the sustaining power of prayer. How do I know?
Because Gandhi himself said so. "Without prayer," he wrote, "I should have been a
lunatic long ago."
Thousands of people could give similar testimony. My own father-well, as I have already
said, my own father would have drowned himself had it not been for my mother's
prayers and faith. Probably thousands of the tortured souls who are now screaming in
our insane asylums could have been saved if they had only turned to a higher power for
help instead of trying to fight life's battles alone.
When we are harassed and reach the limit of our own strength, many of us then turn in
desperation to God-"There are no atheists in foxholes." But why wait till we are
desperate? Why not renew our strength every day? Why wait even until Sunday? For
