Lead, kindly Light ...
Keep thou my feet: I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.
At about the same time, a young man in uniform-somewhere in Europe-was learning the
same lesson. His name was Ted Bengermino, of 5716 Newholme Road, Baltimore,
Maryland-and he had worried himself into a first-class case of combat fatigue.
"In April, 1945," writes Ted Bengermino, "I had worried until I had developed what
doctors call a 'spasmodic transverse colon'-a condition that produced intense pain. If the
war hadn't ended when it did, I am sure I would have had a complete physical
breakdown.
"I was utterly exhausted. I was a Graves Registration, Noncommissioned Officer for the
94th Infantry Division. My work was to help set up and maintain records of all men killed
in action, missing in action, and hospitalised. I also had to help disinter the bodies of
both Allied and enemy soldiers who had been killed and hastily buried in shallow graves
during the pitch of battle. I had to gather up the personal effects of these men and see
that they were sent back to parents or closest relatives who would prize these personal
effects so much. I was constantly worried for fear we might be making embarrassing and
serious mistakes. I was worried about whether or not I would come through all this. I
was worried about whether I would live to hold my only child in my arms-a son of
sixteen months, whom I had never seen. I was so worried and exhausted that I lost
thirty-four pounds. I was so frantic that I was almost out of my mind. I looked at my
hands. They were hardly more than skin and bones. I was terrified at the thought of
going home a physical wreck. I broke down and sobbed like a child. I was so shaken that
tears welled up every time I was alone. There was one period soon after the Battle of
the Bulge started that I wept so often that I almost gave up hope of ever being a normal
human being again.
"I ended up in an Army dispensary. An Army doctor gave me some advice which has
completely changed my life. After giving me a thorough physical examination, he
informed me that my troubles were mental. 'Ted', he said, 'I want you to think of your
life as an hourglass. You know there are thousands of grains of sand in the top of the
hourglass; and they all pass slowly and evenly through the narrow neck in the middle.
Nothing you or I could do would make more than one grain of sand pass through this
narrow neck without impairing the hourglass. You and I and everyone else are like this
hourglass. When we start in the morning, there are hundreds of tasks which we feel that
we must accomplish that day, but if we do not take them one at a time and let them
pass through the day slowly and evenly, as do the grains of sand passing through the
narrow neck of the hourglass, then we are bound to break our own physical or mental
structure.'
"I have practised that philosophy ever since that memorable day that an Army doctor
gave it to me. 'One grain of sand at a time. ... One task at a time.' That advice saved me
physically and mentally during the war; and it has also helped me in my present position
in business. I am a Stock Control Clerk for the Commercial Credit Company in Baltimore.
I found the same problems arising in business that had arisen during the war: a score of
things had to be done at once-and there was little time to do them. We were low in
stocks. We had new forms to handle, new stock arrangements, changes of address,
opening and closing offices, and so on. Instead of getting taut and nervous, I
remembered what the doctor had told me. 'One grain of sand at a time. One task at a
time.' By repeating those words to myself over and over, I accomplished my tasks in a
more efficient manner and I did my work without the confused and jumbled feeling that
had almost wrecked me on the battlefield."
One of the most appalling comments on our present way of life is that half of all the
beds in our hospitals are reserved for patients with nervous and mental troubles,
patients who have collapsed under the crushing burden of accumulated yesterdays and
fearful tomorrows. Yet a vast majority of those people would be walking the streets
today, leading happy, useful lives, if they had only heeded the words of Jesus: "Have no
anxiety about the morrow"; or the words of Sir William Osier: "Live in day-tight
compartments."
You and I are standing this very second at the meeting-place of two eternities: the vast
past that has endured for ever, and the future that is plunging on to the last syllable of
recorded time. We can't possibly live in either of those eternities-no, not even for one
split second. But, by trying to do so, we can wreck both our bodies and our minds. So
let's be content to live the only time we can possibly live: from now until bedtime.
"Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall," wrote Robert Louis
Stevenson. "Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day. Anyone can live
sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, till the sun goes down. And this is all that life really
means."
Yes, that is all that life requires of us; but Mrs. E. K. Shields, 815, Court Street,
Saginaw, Michigan, was driven to despair-even to the brink of suicide-before she
learned to live just till bedtime. "In 1937, I lost my husband," Mrs. Shields said as she
told me her story. "I was very depressed-and almost penniless. I wrote my former
employer, Mr. Leon Roach, of the Roach-Fowler Company of Kansas City, and got my old
job back. I had formerly made my living selling books to rural and town school boards. I
had sold my car two years previously when my husband became ill; but I managed to
scrape together enough money to put a down payment on a used car and started out to
sell books again.
"I had thought that getting back on the road would help relieve my depression; but
driving alone and eating alone was almost more than I could take. Some of the territory
was not very productive, and I found it hard to make those car payments, small as they
were.
"In the spring of 1938, I was working out from Versailles, Missouri. The schools were
poor, the roads bad; I was so lonely and discouraged that at one time I even considered
suicide. It seemed that success was impossible. I had nothing to live for. I dreaded
getting up each morning and facing life. I was afraid of everything: afraid I could not
meet the car payments; afraid I could not pay my room rent; afraid I would not have
enough to eat. I was afraid my health was failing and I had no money for a doctor. All
that kept me from suicide were the thoughts that my sister would be deeply grieved,
and that I did not have enough money to pay my funeral expenses.
"Then one day I read an article that lifted me out of my despondence and gave me the
courage to go on living. I shall never cease to be grateful for one inspiring sentence in
that article. It said: 'Every day is a new life to a wise man.' I typed that sentence out
and pasted it on the windshield of my car, where I saw it every minute I was driving. I
found it wasn't so hard to live only one day at a time. I learned to forget the yesterdays
and to not-think of the tomorrows. Each morning I said to myself: 'Today is a new life.'
"I have succeeded in overcoming my fear of loneliness, my fear of want. I am happy and
fairly successful now and have a lot of enthusiasm and love for life. I know now that I
shall never again be afraid, regardless of what life hands me. I know now that I don't
have to fear the future. I know now that I can live one day at a time-and that 'Every day
is a new life to a wise man.'"
Who do you suppose wrote this verse:
Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He, who can call to-day his own:
He who, secure within, can say:
"To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have liv'd to-day."
Those words sound modern, don't they? Yet they were written thirty years before Christ
was born, by the Roman poet Horace.
One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off
living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon-instead of
enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
Why are we such fools-such tragic fools?
"How strange it is, our little procession of life I" wrote Stephen Leacock. "The child says:
'When I am a big boy.' But what is that? The big boy says: 'When I grow up.' And then,
grown up, he says: 'When I get married.' But to be married, what is that after all? The
thought changes to 'When I'm able to retire." And then, when retirement comes, he
looks back over the landscape traversed; a cold wind seems to sweep over it; somehow
he has missed it all, and it is gone. Life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue
of every day and hour."
The late Edward S. Evans of Detroit almost killed himself with worry before he learned
that life "is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour." Brought up in poverty,
Edward Evans made his first money by selling newspapers, then worked as a grocer's
clerk. Later, with seven people dependent upon him for bread and butter, he got a job
as an assistant librarian. Small as the pay was, he was afraid to quit. Eight years passed
before he could summon up the courage to start out on his own. But once he started, he
built up an original investment of fifty-five borrowed dollars into a business of his own
that made him twenty thousand dollars a year. Then came a frost, a killing frost. He
endorsed a big note for a friend-and the friend went bankrupt.
Quickly on top of that disaster came another: the bank in which he had all his money
collapsed. He not only lost every cent he had, but was plunged into debt for sixteen
thousand dollars. His nerves couldn't take it. "I couldn't sleep or eat," he told me. "I
became strangely ill. Worry and nothing but worry," he said, "brought on this illness.
One day as I was walking down the street, I fainted and fell on the sidewalk. I was no
longer able to walk. I was put to bed and my body broke out in boils. These boils turned
inward until just lying in bed was agony. I grew weaker every day. Finally my doctor
told me that I had only two more weeks to live. I was shocked. I drew up my will, and
then lay back in bed to await my end. No use now to struggle or worry. I gave up,
relaxed, and went to sleep. I hadn't slept two hours in succession for weeks; but now
with my earthly problems drawing to an end, I slept like a baby. My exhausting
weariness began to disappear. My appetite returned. I gained weight.
"A few weeks later, I was able to walk with crutches. Six weeks later, I was able to go
back to work. I had been making twenty thousand dollars a year; but I was glad now to
get a job for thirty dollars a week. I got a job selling blocks to put behind the wheels of
automobiles when they are shipped by freight. I had learned my lesson now. No more
worry for me-no more regret about what had happened in the past-no more dread of
the future. I concentrated all my time, energy, and enthusiasm into selling those
blocks."
Edward S. Evans shot up fast now. In a few years, he was president of the company. His
company-the Evans Product Company-has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange
for years. When Edward S. Evans died in 1945, he was one of the most progressive
business men in the United States. If you ever fly over Greenland, you may land on
Here is the point of the story: Edward S. Evans would never have had the thrill of
achieving these victories in business and in living if he hadn't seen the folly of worryingif
he hadn't learned to live in day-tight compartments.
Five hundred years before Christ was born, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus told his
students that "everything changes except the law of change". He said: "You cannot step
in the same river twice." The river changes every second; and so does the man who
stepped in it. Life is a ceaseless change. The only certainty is today. Why mar the
beauty of living today by trying to solve the problems of a future that is shrouded in
ceaseless change and uncertainty-a future that no one can possibly foretell?
The old Romans had a word for it. In fact, they had two words for it. Carpe diem. "Enjoy
the day." Or, "Seize the day." Yes, seize the day, and make the most of it.
That is the philosophy of Lowell Thomas. I recently spent a week-end at his farm; and I
noticed that he had these words from Psalm CXVIII framed and hanging on the walls of
his broadcasting studio where he would see them often:
This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.
John Ruskin had on his desk a simple piece of stone on which was carved one word:
TODAY. And while I haven't a piece of stone on my desk, I do have a poem pasted on my
mirror where I can see it when I shave every morning-a poem that Sir William Osier
always kept on his desk-a poem written by the famous Indian dramatist, Kalidasa:
Salutation To The Dawn
Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence:
The bliss of growth
The glory of action
The splendour of achievement.
For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision,
But today well lived makes yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day!
Such is the salutation to the dawn.
So, the first thing you should know about worry is this: if you want to keep it out of your
life, do what Sir William Osier did -
1. Shut the iron doors on the past and the future. Live in Day-tight Compartments
Why not ask yourself these questions, and write down the answers?
1. Do I tend to put off living in the present in order to worry about the future, or to
yearn for some "magical rose garden over the horizon"?
2. Do I sometimes embitter the present by regretting things that happened in the pastthat
are over and done with?
3. Do I get up in the morning determined to "Seize the day"-to get the utmost out of
these twenty-four hours?
4. Can I get more out of life by "living in day-tight compartments" ?
5. When shall I start to do this? Next week? .. Tomorrow? ... Today?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 2 -A Magic Formula For Solving Worry Situations
Would you like a quick, sure-fire recipe for handling worry situations-a technique you
can start using right away, before you go any further in reading this book?
Then let me tell you about the method worked out by Willis H. Carrier, the brilliant
engineer who launched the air-conditioning industry, and who is now head of the worldfamous
Carrier Corporation in Syracuse, New York. It is one of the best techniques I ever
heard of for solving worry problems, and I got it from Mr. Carrier personally when we
were having lunch together one day at the Engineers' Club in New York.
"When I was a young man," Mr. Carrier said, "I worked for the Buffalo Forge Company in
Buffalo, New York. I was handed the assignment of installing a gas-cleaning device in a
plant of the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company at Crystal City, Missouri-a plant costing
millions of dollars. The purpose of this installation was to remove the impurities from
the gas so it could be burned without injuring the engines. This method of cleaning gas
was new. It had been tried only once before-and under different conditions. In my work
at Crystal City, Missouri, unforeseen difficulties arose. It worked after a fashion -but not
well enough to meet the guarantee we had made.
"I was stunned by my failure. It was almost as if someone had struck me a blow on the
head. My stomach, my insides, began to twist and turn. For a while I was so worried I
couldn't sleep.
"Finally, common sense reminded me that worry wasn't getting me anywhere; so
figured out a way to handle my problem without worrying. It worked superbly. I have
been using this same anti-worry technique for more than thirty years.
It is simple. Anyone can use it. It consists of three steps:
"Step I. I analysed the situation fearlessly and honestly and figured out what was the
worst that could possibly happen as a result of this failure. No one was going to jail me
or shoot me. That was certain. True, there was a chance that I would lose my position;
and there was also a chance that my employers would have to remove the machinery
and lose the twenty thousand dollars we had invested.
"Step II. After figuring out what was the worst that could possibly happen, I reconciled
myself to accepting it, if necessary. I said to myself: This failure will be a blow to my
record, and it might possibly mean the loss of my job; but if it does, I can always get
another position. Conditions could be much worse; and as far as my employers are
concerned-well, they realise that we are experimenting with a new method of cleaning
gas, and if this experience costs them twenty thousand dollars, they can stand it. They
can charge it up to research, for it is an experiment.
"After discovering the worst that could possibly happen and reconciling myself to
accepting it, if necessary, an extremely important thing happened: I immediately
relaxed and felt a sense of peace that I hadn't experienced in days.
"Step III. From that time on, I calmly devoted my time and energy to trying to improve
upon the worst which I had already accepted mentally.
"I now tried to figure out ways and means by which I might reduce the loss of twenty
thousand dollars that we faced. I made several tests and finally figured out that if we
spent another five thousand for additional equipment, our problem would be solved. We
did this, and instead of the firm losing twenty thousand, we made fifteen thousand.
"I probably would never have been able to do this if I had kept on worrying, because one
of the worst features about worrying is that it destroys our ability to concentrate. When
we worry, our minds jump here and there and everywhere, and we lose all power of
decision. However, when we force ourselves to face the worst and accept it mentally,
we then eliminate all those vague imaginings and put ourselves in a position in which we
are able to concentrate on our problem.
"This incident that I have related occurred many years ago. It worked so superbly that I
have been using it ever since; and, as a result, my life has been almost completely free
from worry."
Now, why is Willis H. Carrier's magic formula so valuable and so practical,
psychologically speaking? Because it yanks us down out of the great grey clouds in which
we fumble around when we are blinded by worry. It plants our feet good and solid on
the earth. We know where we stand. And if we haven't solid ground under us, how in
creation can we ever hope to think anything through?
Professor William James, the father of applied psychology, has been dead for thirtyeight
years. But if he were alive today, and could hear his formula for facing the worst,
he would heartily approve it. How do I know that? Because he told his own students: "Be
willing to have it so ... .Be willing to have it so," he said, because "... Acceptance of
what has happened is the first step in overcoming the consequences of any misfortune."
The same idea was expressed by Lin Yutang in his widely read book, The Importance of
Living. "True peace of mind," said this Chinese philosopher, "comes from accepting the
worst. Psychologically, I think, it means a release of energy."
That's it, exactly! Psychologically, it means a new release of energy! When we have
accepted the worst, we have nothing more to lose. And that automatically means-we
have everything to gain! "After facing the worst," Willis H. Carrier reported, "I
immediately relaxed and felt a sense of peace that I hadn't experienced in days. From
that time on, I was able to think."
Makes sense, doesn't it? Yet millions of people have wrecked their lives in angry turmoil,
because they refused to accept the worst; refused to try to improve upon it; refused to
salvage what they could from the wreck. Instead of trying to reconstruct their fortunes,
they engaged in a bitter and "violent contest with experience"-and ended up victims of
that brooding fixation known as melancholia.
Would you like to see how someone else adopted Willis H. Carrier's magic formula and
applied it to his own problem? Well, here is one example, from a New York oil dealer
who was a student in my classes.
"I was being blackmailed!" this student began. "I didn't believe it was possible-I didn't
believe it could happen outside of the movies-but I was actually being blackmailed!
What happened was this: the oil company of which I was the head had a number of
delivery trucks and a number of drivers. At that time, OPA regulations were strictly in
force, and we were rationed on the amount of oil we could deliver to any one of our
customers. I didn't know it, but it seems that certain of our drivers had been delivering
oil short to our regular customers, and then reselling the surplus to customers of their
own.
"The first inkling I had of these illegitimate transactions was when a man who claimed to
be a government inspector came to see me one day and demanded hush money. He had
got documentary proof of what our drivers had been doing, and he threatened to turn
this proof over to the District Attorney's office if I didn't cough up.
"I knew, of course, that I had nothing to worry about-personally, at least. But I also
knew that the law says a firm is responsible for the actions of its employees. What's
more, I knew that if the case came to court, and it was aired in the newspapers, the
bad publicity would ruin my business. And I was proud of my business-it had been
founded by my father twenty-four years before.
"I was so worried I was sick! I didn't eat or sleep for three days and nights. I kept going
around in crazy circles. Should I pay the money-five thousand dollars-or should I tell this
man to go ahead and do his damnedest? Either way I tried to make up my mind, it ended
in nightmare.
"Then, on Sunday night, I happened to pick up the booklet on How to Stop Worrying
which I had been given in my Carnegie class in public speaking. I started to read it, and
came across the story of Willis H. Carrier. 'Face the worst', it said. So I asked myself:
'What is the worst that can happen if I refuse to pay up, and these blackmailers turn
their records over to the District Attorney?'
"The answer to that was: The ruin of my business-that's the worst that can happen. I
can't go to jail. All that can happen is that I shall be ruined by the publicity.'
"I then said to myself: 'All right, the business is ruined. I accept that mentally. What
happens next?'
"Well, with my business ruined, I would probably have to look for a job. That wasn't bad.
I knew a lot about oil-there were several firms that might be glad to employ me. ... I
began to feel better. The blue funk I had been in for three days and nights began to lift
a little. My emotions calmed down. ... And to my astonishment, I was able to think.
