Quit Your Worrying!. George Wharton James
casual observer of the title. People will worry, they do worry. What they want to know and need to learn is how to quit worrying. This I have attempted herein to show, with the full knowledge, however, that no one person's recipe can infallibly be used by any other person—so that, in reality, all I have tried to do is to set forth the means I have followed to teach myself the delightful lesson of serenity, of freedom from worry, and thereby to suggest to receptive minds a way by which they may possibly attain the same desirable end.
It was the learned and wise Dr. Johnson who wrote:
He may be justly numbered amongst the benefactors of mankind, who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may easily be impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to recur habitually to the mind.
I have no desire to claim as original the title used for these observations, but I do covet the joy of knowing that I have so impressed it upon the memory of thousands that by its constant recurrence it will aid in banishing the monster, worry.
It is almost unavoidable that, in a practical treatise of this nature, there should be some repetition, both in description of worries and the remedies suggested. To the critical reader, however, let me say: Do not worry about this, for I am far more concerned to get my thought into the heads and hearts of my readers than I am to be esteemed a great writer. Let me help but one troubled soul to quit worrying and I will forego all the honors of the ages that might have come to me had I been an essayist of power. And I have repeated purposely, for I know that some thoughts have to knock again and again, ere they are admitted to the places where they are the most needed.
I have written strongly; perhaps some will think too strongly. These, however, must remember that I have written advisedly. I have been considering the subject for half or three parts of a life-time. I have studied men and women; carefully watched their lives; talked with them, and seen the lines worry has engraved on their faces. I have seen and felt the misery caused by their unnecessary worries. I have sat by the bedsides of people made chronic invalids by worry, and I have stood in the cells of maniacs driven insane by worry. Hence I hate it in all its forms, and have expressed myself only as the facts have justified.
Wherein I have sought to show how one might Quit his Worrying, these pages presuppose an earnest desire, a sincere purpose, on the part of the reader to attain that desirable end. There is no universal medicine which one can drink in six doses and thus be cured of his disease. I do not offer my book as a mental cure-all, or nostrum that, if swallowed whole, will cure in five days or ten. As I have tried to show, I conceive worry to be unnatural and totally unnecessary, because of its practical denial of what ought to be, and I believe may be, the fundamental basis of a man's life, viz., his perfect, abiding assurance in the fatherly love of God. As little Pippa sang:
God's in his heaven,
All's right with the world.
The only way, therefore, to lose our sense of worry is to get back to naturalness, to God, and learn the peace, joy, happiness, serenity, that come with practical trust in Him. With some people this change may come instantly; with others, more slowly. Personally I have had to learn slowly, "line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little." And I would caution my readers not to expect too much all at once. But I am fully convinced that as faith, trust, and naturalness grow, worry will cease, will slough off, like the dead skin of the serpent, and leave those once bound by it free from its malign influence. Who cannot see and feel that such a consummation is devoutly to be wished, worth working and earnestly striving for?
If I help a few I shall be more than repaid, if many, my heart will rejoice.
[Signed: George Wharton James]
Pasadena, Calif. February, 1916.
QUIT YOUR WORRYING!
CHAPTER I
THE CURSE OF WORRY
Of how many persons can it truthfully be said they never worry, they are perfectly happy, contented, serene? It would be interesting if each of my readers were to recall his acquaintances and friends, think over their condition in this regard, and then report to me the result. What a budget of worried persons I should have to catalogue, and alas, I am afraid, how few of the serene would there be named. When John Burroughs wrote his immortal poem, Waiting, he struck a deeper note than he dreamed of, and the reason it made so tremendous an impression upon the English-speaking world was that it was a new note to them. It opened up a vision they had not before contemplated. Let me quote it here in full:
Serene I fold my hands and wait,
Nor care for wind, or tide or sea;
I rave no more 'gainst time or fate,
For lo! my own shall come to me.
I stay my haste, I make delays,
For what avails this eager pace?
I stand amid the eternal ways,
And what is mine shall know my face.
Asleep, awake, by night or day,
The friends I seek are seeking me,
No wind can drive my bark astray,
Nor change the tide of destiny.
What matter if I stand alone?
I wait with joy the coming years;
My heart shall reap where it has sown,
And garner up its fruit of tears.
The waters know their own and draw
The brook that springs in yonder height,
So flows the good with equal law
Unto the soul of pure delight.
The stars come nightly to the sky;
The tidal wave unto the sea;
Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high
Can keep my own away from me.
I have been wonderfully struck by the fact that in studying the Upanishads, and other sacred books of the East, there is practically no reference to the kind of worry that is the bane and curse of our Occidental world. In conversation with the learned men of the Orient I find this same delightful fact. Indeed they have no word in their languages to express our idea of fretful worry. Worry is a purely Western product, the outgrowth of our materialism, our eager striving after place and position, power and wealth, our determination to be housed, clothed, and jeweled as well as our neighbors, and a little better if possible; in fact, it comes from our failure to know that life is spiritual not material; that all these outward things are the mere "passing show," the tinsel, the gawds, the tissue-paper, the blue and red lights of the theater, the painted scenery, the mock heroes and heroines of the stage, rather than the real settings of the real life of real men and women. What does the inventor, who knows that his invention will help his fellows, care about the newest dance, or the latest style in ties, gloves or shoes; what does the woman whose heart and brain are completely engaged in relieving suffering care if she is not familiar with the latest novel, or the latest fashions in flounced pantalettes? Life is real, life is earnest, and this does not mean unduly solemn and somber, but that it deals with the real things rather than the paper-flower shows of the stage and the imaginary things of so-called society.
It is the fashion of our active, aggressive, material, Occidental civilization to sneer and scoff at the quiet, passive, and less material civilization of the Orient. We despise—that is, the unthinking majority do—the studious, contemplative Oriental. We believe in being "up and doing." But in this one particular of worry we have much to learn from the Oriental. If