The Freedom of Life | Page 5

hang loosely. These again are two
extremes, but, if the habit has been one of tension, a persistent practice
of the extreme of looseness will lead to a quiet mode of writing in
which ten pages can be finished with the effort it formerly took to write
one.
Sometimes the habit of needless strain has taken such a strong hold that
the very effort to work quietly seems so unnatural as to cause much
nervous suffering. To turn the corner from a bad habit into a true and
wholesome one is often very painful, but, the first pain worked through,
the right habit grows more and more easy, until finally the better way
carries us along and we take it involuntarily.

For the young woman who felt she had come to the end of her powers,
it was work or die; therefore, when she had become rested enough to
see and understand at all, she welcomed the idea that it was not her
work that tired her, but the way in which she did it, and she listened
eagerly to the directions that should teach her to do it with less fatigue,
and, as an experiment, offered to go back and try the "lazy way" for a
week. At the end of a week she reported that the "lazy way" had rested
her remarkably, but she did not do her work so well. Then she had to
learn that she could keep more quietly and steadily concentrated upon
her work, doing it accurately and well, without in the least interfering
with the "lazy way." Indeed, the better concentrated we are, the more
easily and restfully we can work, for concentration does not mean
straining every nerve and muscle toward our work,--it means _dropping
everything that interferes,_ and strained nerves and muscles constitute a
very bondage of interference.
The young woman went back to her work for another week's
experiment, and this time returned with a smiling face, better color, and
a new and more quiet life in her eyes. She had made the "lazy way"
work, and found a better power of concentration at the same time. She
knew that it was only a beginning, but she felt secure now in the certain
knowledge that it was not her work that had been killing her, but the
way in which she had done it; and she felt confident of her power to do
it restfully and, at the same time, better than before. Moreover, in
addition to practising the new way of working, she planned to get
regular exercise in the open air, even if it had to come in the evening,
and to eat only nourishing food. She has been at work now for several
years, and, at last accounts, was still busy, with no temptation to stop
because of overfatigue.
If any reader is conscious of suffering now from the strain of his work
and would like to get relief, the first thing to do is to notice that it is
less the work that tires him than his way of doing it, and the attitude of
his mind toward it. Beginning with that conviction, there comes at first
an interest in the process of dropping strain and then a new interest in
the work itself, and a healthy concentration in doing the merest
drudgery as well as it can be done, makes the drudgery attractive and

relieves one from the oppressive fatigue of uninteresting monotony.
If you have to move your whole body in your daily work, the first care
should be to move the feet and legs heavily. Feel as if each foot
weighed a ton, and each hand also; and while you work take long, quiet
breaths,--breaths such as you see a man taking when he is very quietly
and soundly sleeping.
If the work is sedentary, it is a help before starting in the morning to
drop your head forward very loosely, slowly and heavily, and raise it
very slowly, then take a long, quiet breath. Repeat this several times
until you begin to feel a sense of weight in your head. If there is not
time in the morning, do it at night and recall the feeling while you are
dressing or while you are going to work, and then, during your work,
stop occasionally just to feel your head heavy and then go on. Very
soon you become sensitive to the tension in the back of your neck and
drop it without stopping work at all.
Long, quiet breaths while you work are always helpful. If you are
working in bad air, and cannot change the air, it is better to try to have
the breaths only quiet and gentle, and take long, full breaths whenever
you are out-of-doors and before going to sleep