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What are
you rushing about for, might one ask in a friendly
way. Why did you dash out of the house this morning
as if a tiger were after you? Why have you been
racing about all day like a neurotic grasshopper?
Why do you charge along subway platforms like
cavalry? What is the idea of writhing with
impatience when your phone call isn't answered inside of
three seconds? Why do you sometimes finish people's
sentences for them and "take the words out of their
mouths"? Why do you risk your neck dashing into
the street thirty seconds before the green light makes it
safe?
What is
it all about? You appear to be going somewhere--but
where? Surely all this frenzied rushing should have
a logical objective--but has it?
Actually,
I think you will find that it has not. I think if
you analyze your movements for one whole day you will
discover that three-quarters of your activities have
really been wasted motion. You could have done a
better day's work with much more profit to yourself and
others with about 25 percent of the energy, quietly and
scientifically applied--besides going to bed with healthy
fatigue instead of nervous prostration.
Where are
you going? Well, I do not know about you, but I do
know exactly where most people are going--to the
cemetery. We know that unless we regenerate we shall
die some day.
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Now people who are regenerating do not
rush, because part of the regeneration treatment is to
cultivate poise, calm, and patience. So all the
rushing and dashing and trampling on other people is just
in order to get--to the cemetery. Hardly seems worth
it, does it?
Walk
along any busy street and study the rushing, surging
throng, and note that they are all rushing somewhere--to
the graveyard. Of course, the route will be a
circuitous one, they will loop round thousands of miles
first--but that is the goal to which they are rushing.
At the
entrance to a large cemetery near New York a notice says,
with unconscious irony, "one way traffic only."
Now, is
it good enough to wear yourself out, undermine your
health, and worry all the joy out of your life just to go
off and be buried?
Take it
easy. Enjoy life reasonably as you go along.
You are really in eternity now, and in eternity no wise
person hurries. God does not want us to die.
It is we who kill ourselves with hurry and worry. If
we understood God's laws and applied them, we could live
very long lives on this earth in strong vigorous health,
and then, when there was no more to learn here, transcend
consciously. Some day the race will learn
this. Meanwhile, take it easy and trust in God.
1937
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