The Untroubled Mind | Page 8

all that we can ask. The peace of mind that is unguided, in the
conscious and literal sense, is a thing which too few of us know.
Mr. Arnold Bennett, in his little book, "How to Live on Twenty-four
Hours a Day," teaches that we should leave no time unused in our lives;
that we should accomplish a great deal more and be infinitely more
effective and progressive if we devoted our minds to the definite
working-out of necessary problems whenever those times occur in
which we are apt to be desultory. I wish here to make a plea for

desultoriness and for an idleness which goes even beyond the idleness
of the man who reads the newspaper and forgets what he has read. It
seems to me better, whether we are sick or well, to allow long periods
in our lives when we think only casually. To the good old adage,
"Work while you work and play while you play," we might well add,
"Rest while you rest," lest in the end you should be unable successfully
either to work or play.
A man is not necessarily condemned to tortures of mind because he
must rest for a week or a month or a year. I know that there must be
anxious times, especially when idleness means dependence, and when
it brings hardship to those who need our help. But the invalid must not
try constantly to puzzle the matter out. If we do not make ourselves
sick with worry, we shall be able sometime to approach active life with
sufficient frankness and force. It is the constant effort of the poor, tired
mind to solve its problems that not only fails of its object, but plunges
the invalid deeper into discouragement and misunderstanding. How
cruel this is, and how unfortunate that it should come more commonly
to those who try the hardest to overcome their handicaps, to throw off
the yoke of idleness and to be well.
When you have tried your best to get back to your work and have failed,
when you have done this not once but many times, it is inevitable that
misunderstanding should creep in, inevitable that you should question
very deeply and doubt not infrequently. Yet the chances are that one of
the reasons for your failure is that you have tried too hard, that you
have not known how to rest. When you have learned how to rest, when
you have learned to put off thinking and planning until the mind
becomes fresh and clear, when you are in a fair way to know the joy of
idleness and the peace of rest, you are a great deal more likely to get
back to efficiency and to find your way along the great paths of activity
into the world of life.
It is not so much the idleness, then, as the attempt to overcome its
irksomeness, that makes this condition painful. The invalid in bed is in
a trap, to be tormented by his thoughts unless he knows the meaning of
successful idleness. This knowledge may come to him by such strategy

as I have suggested--by giving up the struggle against worry and fret;
but peace will come surely, steadily, "with healing in its wings," when
the mind is changed altogether, when life becomes free because of a
growth and development that finds significance even in idleness, that
sees the world with wise and patient eyes.
In a way it does not matter, your physical condition or mine, if our
"eyes have seen the glory" that deifies life and makes even its waste
places beautiful. What is that view from your window as you lie in your
bed? A bit of the sea, if you are fortunate, a corner of garden, surely,
the top of an elm tree against the blue. What is it but the revelations of
a God in the world? There is enough that is sad and unhappy, but over
all are these simple, ineffable things. If the garden is an expression of
God in the world, then the world and life are no longer meaningless.
Even idleness becomes in some degree bearable because it is a part of a
significant world.
Unfortunately, the idleness of disability often means pain, the wear and
tear of physical or nervous suffering. That is another matter. We cannot
meet it fully with any philosophy. My patients very often beg to know
the best way to bear pain, how they may overcome the attacks of
"nerves" that are harder to bear than pain. To such a question I can only
say that the time to bear pain is before and after. Live in such a way in
the times of comparative comfort that the attacks are less likely to
appear and easier to bear