如何停止焦虑开始新生活-18

Some people who read this chapter are going to say: "All this talk about gettinginterested in others is a lot of damn nonsense! Sheer religious pap! None of that stufffor me! I am going to put money in my purse. I am going to grab all I can get-and grab itnow-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 thegreat philosophers and teachers since the beginning of recorded history-Jesus,Confucius, Buddha, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Saint Francis-were all wrong. But sinceyou may sneer at the teachings of religious leaders, let's turn for advice to a couple ofatheists. First, let's take the late A. E. Housman, professor at Cambridge University, andone of the most distinguished scholars of his generation. In 1936, he gave an address atCambridge University on "The Name and Nature of Poetry". It that address, he declaredthat "the greatest truth ever uttered and the most profound moral discovery of all timewere those words of Jesus: 'He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth hislife for my sake shall find it.' "We have heard preachers say that all our lives. But Housman was an atheist, apessimist, a man who contemplated suicide; and yet he felt that the man who thoughtonly of himself wouldn't get much out of life. He would be miserable. But the man whoforgot 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 mostdistinguished American atheist of the twentieth century: Theodore Dreiser. Dreiserridiculed all religions as fairy tales and regarded life as "a tale told by an idiot, full ofsound and fury, signifying nothing." Yet Dreiser advocated the one great principle thatJesus 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 forothers, 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 quickabout it. Time is a-wastin'. "I shall pass this way but once. Therefore any good that I cando or any kindness that I can show-let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, forI 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 puta smile of joy on someone's face.~~~~Part Four In A Nutshell -Seven Ways To Cultivate A Mental Attitude That Will Bring YouPeace And HappinessRULE 1: Let's fill our minds with thoughts of peace, courage, health, and hope, for ' 'ourlife is what our thoughts make it".RULE 2: Let's never try to get even with our enemies, because if we do we will hurtourselves far more than we hurt them. Let's do as General Eisenhower does: let's neverwaste a minute thinking about people we don't like.RULE 3: A. Instead of worrying about ingratitude, let's expect it. Let's remember thatJesus healed ten lepers in one day-and only one thanked Him. Why should we expectmore gratitude than Jesus got?B. Let's remember that the only way to find happiness is not to expect gratitude-but togive for the joy of giving.C. Let's remember that gratitude is a "cultivated" trait; so if we want our children to begrateful, 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 isignorance" 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 forothers. "When you are good to others, you are best to yourself."Part Five -The Golden Rule For Conquering WorryChapter 19 -How My Mother And Father Conquered WorryAs I have said, I was born and brought up on a Missouri farm. Like most farmers of thatday, my parents had pretty hard scratching. My mother had been a countryschoolteacher 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 butterand eggs at the grocery store for flour, sugar, coffee. When I was twelve years old, Ididn't have as much as fifty cents a year to spend on myself. I can still remember theday we went to a Fourth-of-July celebration and Father gave me ten cents to spend as Iwished. 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 deepand the thermometer shivered around twenty-eight degrees below zero. Until I wasfourteen, I never had any rubbers or overshoes. During the long, cold winters, my feetwere always wet and cold. As a child I never dreamed that anyone had dry, warm feetduring the winter.My parents slaved sixteen hours a day, yet we constantly were oppressed by debts andharassed by hard luck. One of my earliest memories is watching the flood waters of the102 River rolling over our corn-and hayfields, destroying everything. The floodsdestroyed our crops six years out of seven. Year after year, our hogs died of cholera andwe burned them. I can close my eyes now and recall the pungent odour of burning hogflesh.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 ourcorn that year, for the price of fat cattle fell on the Chicago market; and after feedingand fattening the cattle, we got only thirty dollars more for them than what we hadpaid 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 myfather bought. We fed them for three years, hired men to break them, then shippedthem to Memphis, Tennessee-and sold them for less than what we had paid for themthree years previously.After ten years of hard, grueling work, we were not only penniless; we were heavily indebt. Our farm was mortgaged. Try as hard as we might, we couldn't even pay theinterest on the mortgage. The bank that held the mortgage abused and insulted myfather and threatened to take his farm away from him. Father was forty-seven yearsold. After more than thirty years of hard work, he had nothing but debts andhumiliation. It was more than he could take. He worried. His health broke. He had nodesire for food; in spite of the hard physical work he was doing in the field all day, hehad to take medicine to give him an appetite. He lost flesh. The doctor told my motherthat he would be dead within six months. Father was so worried that he no longerwanted to live. I have often heard my mother say that when Father went to the barn tofeed the horses and milk the cows, and didn't come back as soon as she expected, shewould go out to the barn, fearing that she would find his body dangling from the end ofa rope. One day as he returned home from Maryville, where the banker had threatenedto foreclose the mortgage, he stopped his horses on a bridge crossing the 102 River, gotoff the wagon, and stood for a long time looking down at the water, debating withhimself 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 mymother's deep, abiding, and joyous belief that if we loved God and kept Hiscommandments everything would come out all right. Mother was right. Everything didcome out all right in the end. Father lived forty-two happy years longer, and died in1941, at the age of eighty-nine.During all those years of struggle and heartache, my mother never worried. She took allher troubles to God in prayer. Every night before we went to bed, Mother would read achapter from the Bible; frequently Mother or Father would read these comforting wordsof 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 thatlonely Missouri farmhouse and prayed for God's love and protection.When William James was professor of philosophy at Harvard, he said: "Of course, thesovereign cure for worry is religious faith."You don't have to go to Harvard to discover that. My mother found that out on a Missourifarm. Neither floods nor debts nor disaster could suppress her happy, radiant, andvictorious 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 prayIn fathomless billows of love.My mother wanted me to devote my life to religious work. I thought seriously ofbecoming a foreign missionary. Then I went away to college; and gradually, as the yearspassed, a change came over me. I studied biology, science, philosophy, and comparativereligions. I read books on how the Bible was written. I began to question many of itsassertions. I began to doubt many of the narrow doctrines taught by the countrypreachers of that day. I was bewildered. Like Walt Whitman, I "felt curious, abruptquestionings stir within me". I didn't know what to believe. I saw no purpose in life. Istopped praying. I became an agnostic.I believed that all life was planless and aimless. I believed that human beings had nomore divine purpose than had the dinosaurs that roamed the earth two hundred millionyears ago. I felt that some day the human race would perish-just as the dinosaurs had. Iknew that science taught that the sun was slowly cooling and that when its temperaturefell even ten per cent, no form of life could exist on earth. I sneered at the idea of abeneficent God who had created man in His own likeness. I believed that the billionsupon billions of suns whirling through black, cold, lifeless space had been created byblind force. Maybe they had never been created at all. Maybe they existed for ever-justas time and space have always existed.Do I profess to know the answers to all these questions now? No. No man has ever beenable to explain the mystery of the universe-the mystery of life. We are surrounded bymysteries. The operation of your body is a profound mystery. So is the electricity in yourhome. 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, hasbeen giving Antioch College thirty thousand dollars a year out of his own pocket to tryto discover why grass is green. He declares that if we knew how grass is able totransform sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into food sugar, we could transformcivilisation.Even the operation of the engine in your car is a profound mystery. General MotorsResearch Laboratories have spent years of time and millions of dollars trying to find outhow and why a spark in the cylinder sets off an explosion that makes your car run; andthey don't know the answer.The fact that we don't understand the mysteries of our bodies or electricity or a gasengine doesn't keep us from using and enjoying them. The fact that I don't understandthe 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 thatwould not be accurate. I have gone forward to a new concept of religion. I no longerhave the faintest interest in the differences in creeds that divide the Churches. But I amtremendously interested in what religion does for me, just as I am interested in whatelectricity 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 givesme, as William James puts it, "a new zest for life ... more life, a larger, richer, moresatisfying 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 myhappiness. It gives me abounding health. It helps me to create for myself "an oasis ofpeace amidst the whirling sands of life".Francis Bacon was right when he said, three hundred and fifty years ago: "A littlephilosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men'sminds about to religion."I can remember the days when people talked about the conflict between science andreligion. But no more. The newest of all sciences-psychiatry-is teaching what Jesustaught. Why? Because psychiatrists realise that prayer and a strong religious faith willbanish the worries, the anxieties, the strains and fears that cause more than half of allour ills. They know, as one of their leaders, Dr. A. A. Brill said: "Anyone who is trulyreligious 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 hadexpected him to show the strains of the long years he had spent in building up andmanaging one of the world's greatest businesses. So I was surprised to how calm andwell and peaceful he looked at seventy-eight. When I asked him if he ever worried, hereplied: "No. I believe God is managing affairs and that He doesn't need any advice fromme. 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 tolead religious lives to avoid hell-fires in the next world, but they are urging us to leadreligious lives to avoid the hell-fires of this world-the hell-fires of stomach ulcer, anginapectoris, nervous breakdowns, and insanity. As an example of what our psychologistsand psychiatrists are teaching, read The Return to Religion, by Dr. Henry C. Link. Youwill probably find a copy in your public library.Yes, the Christian religion is an inspiring, health-giving activity. Jesus said: "I came thatye might have life and have it more abundantly." Jesus denounced and attacked the dryforms and dead rituals that passed for religion in His day. He was a rebel. He preached anew kind of religion-a religion that threatened to upset the world. That is why He wascrucified. He preached that religion should exist for man-not man for religion; that theSabbath was made for man-not man for the Sabbath. He talked more about fear thanHe did about sin. The wrong kind of fear is a sin-a sin against your health, a sin againstthe richer, fuller, happier, courageous life that Jesus advocated. Emerson spoke ofhimself as a "Professor of the Science of Joy". Jesus, too, was a teacher of "the Scienceof Joy". He commanded His disciples to "rejoice and leap for joy".Jesus declared that there were only two important things about religion: loving Godwith 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, ofTulsa, Oklahoma. He tries to live by the golden rule; and he is incapable of doinganything mean, selfish, or dishonest. However, he doesn't attend church, and regardshimself as an agnostic. Nonsense! What makes a man a Christian? I'll let John Baillieanswer that. He was probably the most distinguished professor who ever taught theologyat the University of Edinburgh. He said: "What makes a man a Christian is neither hisintellectual acceptance of certain ideas, nor his conformity to a certain rule, but hispossession 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 ThomasDavidson, saying that as the years went by, he found himself "less and less able to getalong without God".Earlier in this book I mentioned that when the judges tried to pick the best story onworry sent in by my students, they had so much difficulty in choosing between twooutstanding stories that the prize money was split. Here is the second story that tied forfirst prize-the unforgettable experience of a woman who had to find out the hard waythat "she couldn't get along without God".I am calling this woman Mary Cushman, although that is not her actual name. She haschildren and grandchildren who might be embarrassed to see her story in print, so Iagreed to disguise her identity. However, the woman herself is real-very real. A fewmonths ago, she sat in the armchair beside my desk and told me her story. Here is howit goes:"During the depression," she said, "my husband's average salary was eighteen dollars aweek. Many times we didn't have even that because he didn't get paid when he was illandthat was often. He had a series of minor accidents; he also had mumps, scarletfever, and repeated attacks of flu. We lost the little house that we had built with ourown hands. We owed fifty dollars at the grocery store-and had five children to feed. Itook in washing and ironing from the neighbours, and bought second-hand clothes fromthe Salvation Army store and made them over for my children to wear. I made myself illwith worry. One day the grocer to whom we owed fifty dollars accused my eleven-yearoldboy 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 thathe had been disgraced and humiliated in front of other people. That was the straw thatbroke my back. I thought of all the misery we had endured; and I couldn't see any hopefor the future. I must have become temporarily insane with worry, for I shut off mywashing machine, took my little five-year-old daughter into the bedroom, and pluggedup the windows and cracks with paper and rags. My little girl said to me: 'Mommy, whatare you doing?' and I answered: There's a little draught in here.' Then I turned on the gasheater we had in the bedroom-and didn't light it. As I lay down on the bed with mydaughter 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 forgetthe smell of that gas. ..."Suddenly I thought I heard music. I listened. I had forgotten to turn the radio off in thekitchen. It didn't matter now. But the music kept on, and presently I heard someonesinging an old hymn:What a Friend we have in Jesus,All our sins and grief's to bear!What a privilege to carryEverything to God in prayer.Oh, what peace we often forfeitOh, what needless pain we bearAll because we do not carryEverything to God in prayer!"As I listened to that hymn, I realised that I had made a tragic mistake. I had tried tofight all my terrible battles alone. I had not taken everything to God in prayer. ... Ijumped 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 pouredout my soul in thanksgiving to God for the blessings He had given me: five splendidchildren-all of them healthy and fine, strong in body and mind. I promised God thatnever 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 werented for five dollars a month, I thanked God for that schoolhouse; I thanked Him forthe fact that I at least had a roof to keep us warm and dry. I thanked God honestly thatthings 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 jobas a hat-check girl in a large country club, and sold stockings as a side line. To help puthimself through college, one of my sons got a job on a farm, milked thirteen cowsmorning and night. Today my children are grown up and married; I have three finegrandchildren. And, as I look back on that terrible day when I turned on the gas, I thankGod over and over that I 'woke up' in time. What joys I would have missed if I hadcarried 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'tdo it! Don't!' The blackest moments we live through can only last a little time-and thencomes the future. ..."On the average, someone commits suicide in the United States every thirty-fiveminutes. On the average, someone goes insane every hundred and twenty seconds. Mostof these suicides-and probably many of the tragedies of insanity-could have beenprevented if these people had only had the solace and peace that are found in religionand prayer.One of the most distinguished psychiatrists living, Dr. Carl Jung, says in his book ModernMan in Search of a Soul (*):"During the past thirty years, people from all the civilised countries of the earth haveconsulted me. I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among all my patients in thesecond half of life-that is to say, over thirty-five-there has not been one whose problemin the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say thatevery one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every agehave given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did notregain 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 haveconsulted me. I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among all my patients in thesecond half of hie-that is to say, over thirty-five-there has not been one whose problemin the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say thatevery one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every agehave given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did notregain his religious outlook."[*] Kegar Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd.William James said approximately the same thing: "Faith is one of the forces by whichmen live," he declared, "and the total absence of it means collapse."The late Mahatma Gandhi, the greatest Indian leader since Buddha, would havecollapsed 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 alunatic long ago."Thousands of people could give similar testimony. My own father-well, as I have alreadysaid, my own father would have drowned himself had it not been for my mother'sprayers and faith. Probably thousands of the tortured souls who are now screaming inour insane asylums could have been saved if they had only turned to a higher power forhelp 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 indesperation to God-"There are no atheists in foxholes." But why wait till we aredesperate? Why not renew our strength every day? Why wait even until Sunday? For