O soft embalmer of the still midnight.
Keats.

When we learn to confine our attention to “the things that are quite enough for any man to attempt,” we shall find that there is little real ground for worry or fretting in our daily life. It is a fact that, if our work wearies or exhausts us, either we are doing the wrong thing or else doing it in the wrong way. For the Spirit of Life is no taskmaster. It is we who make this world a daily grind. It is not naturally a “vale of tears” nor a “wilderness of woe.”

and we may all have those rights if we claim them as our own. Worry is a disease that some people enjoy as much as some others enjoy invalidism. There are some people who can hardly speak and think of anything but their physical ailments; they never recall the mornings when they felt strong and vigorous, the nights they slept soundly, but only the days when they had uncomfortable sensations of weakness or distress, and the nights when sleep was somewhat broken. And you will notice that they will say they “did not sleep well” when they mean that they did not sleep much. We may always sleep well, even though we do not sleep much.

There are other people who, though they do not weary us with accounts of their bodily symptoms, tell us always of their cares. They revel in tales of distress which shall go to show how much more oppressed they are than their fellows. They take their worries as the healthy farmer takes his food, eagerly, and would be distinctly upset if anything happened to interfere with their enjoyment of them. If they are going somewhere, they worry lest it should rain, or lest something unforeseen should happen to prevent the expedition. It is the same old story, they want their “own way.” They cannot conceive of a disappointment being a blessing in disguise; they know of nothing so hard to be borne as the setting aside of a passing desire.

For such as these life is full of “bitter disappointments”; cares and worries naturally fall to their lot; the sun seldom shines for them, and even when it does they think they can note the spots upon it,—while the rain falls so heavily and so frequently that it makes runnels over their whole plan of life, reducing it to a scene of desolation. And all the time the sun is shining, and joys are awaiting them did they but look in the right direction. They are “pulling the wrong string,” as it were. A little child kept calling to his mother that he could not find what he was seeking, because he could not “make the light come on.” His mother wisely replied: “You are probably pulling the wrong string, Harold. Pull the other.” The moment he did so the electric light flooded the room, and the child found what he sought. It had lain right to his hand all the time, but he did not know to pull the right string. Our heart’s desire lies just as close to us.

Many a person who is always having trouble, who is worried and uneasy, longing for rest and comfort but never finding it; to whom “life is a dreary puzzle scarcely worth the solving,” is simply “pulling the wrong string,” the string of self-will, of separateness. His soul is darkened by his refusal to turn on the light, and the shadow covers the whole of his life.

The darkness is filled with imaginary terrors. We people the corners with hobgoblins that do not exist, and that in our hearts we know could not exist. Little Bessie had for several nights cried out in terror after she had been put to bed, so that her mother was compelled to go to her. At first she would not say what had frightened her, but at last the story came out.

“I was thinking how frightened I should be if there was a bogey-man in the closet and he should suddenly put his head out and make faces at me.” “But, child,” said her mother, “you know there is no such thing as a bogey-man, so he could not be in the closet, nor make faces at you.” “Yes, mother, I know that,” answered the child, slowly; “but, mother, if there was a bogey-man, and he did get into my closet, and if he did put out his head and make faces at me, wouldn’t I be awfully frightened? Well, it’s that that makes me scream.” And often the thing that makes us “scream” has no more existence in fact than Bessie’s bogey-man. We get to turning things over in our minds, dwelling upon dire possibilities until they become actual to us, and we get as much pain and suffering from them as we should if they were real.

It would puzzle ourselves, if we gave the matter attention, to discover why we are more given to worrying than to rejoicing, if it is not that we misunderstand life and its purposes.

Consider life just on its physical side, and we shall see, as the Creator saw when he looked upon it, that it is all very good. There are more sunny days in the year than stormy ones; there is more growing time than decaying time, for spring, summer, and autumn comprise three parts of the year, and growth continues through them all; the moon shines always somewhere, and “the stars come nightly to the sky.” The bright-colored blossoms show more than the somber-hued; more birds sing sweetly than croak harshly, and even the croak melts into the symphony as a needed note. The purely material world points to joy and gladness rather than to sorrow and repining.

Then, when we come to man, we find that he has more strength than weakness, more health than sickness, more power than inability, else man had not survived the ages. Moreover, man must have more capacity for enjoyment than for sorrow, else he would abandon life in weariness, or at best he would forget how to laugh; the mere animal does not laugh, that is one of man’s accomplishments.

Man has also more desire for knowledge than for ease, else he would never have penetrated into the secrets and mysteries of Nature; man’s strong aspirations surmount his groveling tendencies, else he had never come up out of savagery into the light and development of kinship with the high gods.

Then, why should we give way to repining? All things point to the apostolic truth that “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” And always the morning comes. Moreover, the darkest night is seldom starless if we look up intently enough. If we blind our eyes with tears, we cannot see the light even when the horizon is rosy with the rising sun. Better by far is it to feel with Browning: