This time I said to myself: "You"ve got to be Dale Carnegie, with all his faults and limitations. You can"t possibly be anybody else." So I quit trying to be a combination of other men, and rolled up my sleeves and did what I should have done in the first place: I wrote a textbook on public speaking out of my own experiences, observations, and convictions as a speaker and a teacher of speaking. I learned-for all time, I hope-the lesson that Sir Walter Raleigh learned. (I am not talking about the Sir Walter who threw his coat in the mud for the Queen to step on. I am talking about the Sir Walter Raleigh who was professor of English literature at Oxford back in 1904.) "I can"t write a book commensurate with Shakespeare," he said, "but I can write a book by me."
Be yourself. Act on the sage advice that Irving Berlin gave the late George Gershwin. When Berlin and Gershwin first met, Berlin was famous but Gershwin was a struggling young composer working for thirty-five dollars a week in Tin Pan Alley. Berlin, impressed by Gershwin"s ability, offered Gershwin a job as his musical secretary at almost three times the salary he was then getting. "But don"t take the job," Berlin advised. "If you do, you may develop into a second-rate Berlin. But if you insist on being yourself, some day you"ll become a first-rate Gershwin."
Gershwin heeded that warning and slowly transformed himself into one of the significant American composer of his generation.
Charlie Chaplin, Will Rogers, Mary Margaret McBride, Gene Autry, and millions of others had to learn the lesson I am trying to hammer home in this chapter. They had to learn the hard way-just as I did.
When Charlie Chaplin first started making films, the director of the pictures insisted on Chaplin"s imitating a popular German comedian of that day. Charlie Chaplin got nowhere until he acted himself. Bob Hope had a similar experience: spent years in a singing-and-dancing act-and got nowhere until he began to wisecrack and be himself. Will Rogers twirled a rope in vaudeville for years without saying a word. He got nowhere until he discovered his unique gift for humour and began to talk as he twirled his rope.
When Mary Margaret McBride first went on the air, she tried to be an Irish comedian and failed. When she tried to be just what she was-a plain country girl from Missouri-she became one of the most popular radio stars in New York.
When Gene Autry tried to get rid of his Texas accent and dressed like city boys and claimed he was from New York, people merely laughed behind his back. But when he started tw.a.n.ging his banjo and singing cowboy ballads, Gene Autry started out on a career that made him the world"s most popular cowboy both in pictures and on the radio.
You are something new in this world. Be glad of it. Make the most of what nature gave you. In the last a.n.a.lysis, all art is autobiographical. You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you.
For better or for worse, you must cultivate your own little garden. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.
As Emerson said in his essay on "Self-Reliance" : "There is a time in every man"s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried."
That is the way Emerson said it. But here is the way a poet -the late Douglas Malloch-said it: If you can"t be a pine on the top of the hill.
Be a scrub in the valley-but be The best little scrub by the side of the rill; Be a bush, if you can"t be a tree.
If you can"t be a bush, be a bit of the gra.s.s.
And some highway happier make; If you can"t be a muskie, then just be a ba.s.s- But the liveliest ba.s.s in the lake!
We can"t all be captains, we"ve got to be crew.
There"s something for all of us here.
There"s big work to do and there"s lesser to do And the task we must do is the near.
If you can"t be a highway, then just be a trail, If you can"t be the sun, be a star; It isn"t by the size that you win or you fail- Be the best of whatever you are!
To cultivate a mental att.i.tude that will bring us peace and freedom from worry, here is Rule 5: Let"s not imitate others. Let"s find ourselves and be ourselves.
Chapter 17: If You Have A Lemon, Make A Lemonade.
While writing this book, I dropped in one day at the University of Chicago and asked the Chancellor, Robert Maynard Hutchins, how he kept from worrying. He replied: "I have always tried to follow a bit of advice given me by the late Julius Rosenwald, President of Sears, Roebuck and Company: "When you have a lemon, make lemonade." "
That is what a great educator does. But the fool does the exact opposite. If he finds that life has handed him a lemon, he gives up and says: "I"m beaten. It is fate. I haven"t got a chance." Then he proceeds to rail against the world and indulge in an orgy of self-pity. But when the wise man is handed a lemon, he says: "What lesson can I learn from this misfortune? How can I improve my situation? How can I turn this lemon into a lemonade?"
After spending a lifetime studying people and their hidden reserves of power, the great psychologist, Alfred Adler, declared that one of the wonder-filled characteristics of human beings is "their power to turn a minus into a plus."
Here is an interesting and stimulating story of a woman I know who did just that. Her name is Thelma Thompson, and she lives at 100 Morningside Drive, New York City. "During the war," she said, as she told me of her experience, "during the war, my husband was stationed at an Army training camp near the Mojave Desert, in New Mexico. I went to live there in order to be near him. I hated the place. I loathed it. I had never before been so miserable. My husband was ordered out on maneuvers in the Mojave Desert, and I was left in a tiny shack alone. The heat was unbearable-125 degrees in the shade of a cactus. Not a soul to talk to but Mexicans and Indians, and they couldn"t speak English. The wind blew incessantly, and all the food I ate, and the very air I breathed, were filled with sand, sand, sand!
"I was so utterly wretched, so sorry for myself, that I wrote to my parents. I told them I was giving up and coming back home. I said I couldn"t stand it one minute longer. I would rather be in jail! My father answered my letter with just two lines-two lines that will always sing in my memory-two lines that completely altered my life: Two men looked out from prison bars, One saw the mud, the other saw stars.
"I read those two lines over and over. I was ashamed of myself. I made up my mind I would find out what was good in my present situation. I would look for the stars.
"I made friends with the natives, and their reaction amazed me. When I showed interest in their weaving and pottery, they gave me presents of their favourite pieces which they had refused to sell to tourists. I studied the fascinating forms of the cactus and the yuccas and the Joshua trees. I learned about prairie dogs, watched for the desert sunsets, and hunted for seash.e.l.ls that had been left there millions of years ago when the sands of the desert had been an ocean floor.
"What brought about this astonishing change in me? The Mojave Desert hadn"t changed. The Indians hadn"t changed. But I had. I had changed my att.i.tude of mind. And by doing so, I transformed a wretched experience into the most exciting adventure of my life. I was stimulated and excited by this new world that I had discovered. I was so excited I wrote a book about it-a novel that was published under the t.i.tle Bright Ramparts. ... I had looked out of my self-created prison and found the stars."
Thelma Thompson, you discovered an old truth that the Greeks taught five hundred years before Christ was born: "The best things are the most difficult."
Harry Emerson Fosd.i.c.k repeated it again in the twentieth century: "Happiness is not mostly pleasure; it is mostly victory." Yes, the victory that comes from a sense of achievement, of triumph, of turning our lemons into lemonades.
I once visited a happy farmer down in Florida who turned even a poison lemon into lemonade. When he first got this farm, he was discouraged. The land was so wretched he could neither grow fruit nor raise pigs. Nothing thrived there but scrub oaks and rattlesnakes. Then he got his idea. He would turn his liability into an a.s.set: he would make the most of these rattlesnakes. To everyone"s amazement, he started canning rattlesnake meat. When I stopped to visit him a few years ago, I found that tourists were pouring in to see his rattlesnake farm at the rate of twenty thousand a year. His business was thriving. I saw poison from the fangs of his rattlers being shipped to laboratories to make anti-venom toxin; I saw rattlesnake skins being sold at fancy prices to make women"s shoes and handbags. I saw canned rattlesnake meat being shipped to customers all over the world. I bought a picture postcard of the place and mailed it at the local post office of the village, which had been re-christened "Rattlesnake, Florida", in honour of a man who had turned a poison lemon into a sweet lemonade.
As I have travelled up and down and back and forth across America time after time, it has been my privilege to meet dozens of men and women who have demonstrated "their power to turn a minus into a plus".
The late William Bolitho, author of Twelve Against the G.o.ds, put it like this: "The most important thing in life is not to capitalise on your gains. Any fool can do that. The really important thing is to profit from your losses. That requires intelligence; and it makes the difference between a man of sense and a fool."
Bolitho uttered those words after he had lost a leg in a railway accident. But I know a man who lost both legs and turned his minus into a plus. His name is Ben Fortson. I met him in a hotel elevator in Atlanta, Georgia. As I stepped into the elevator, I noticed this cheerful-looking man, who had both legs missing, sitting in a wheel-chair in a corner of the elevator. When the elevator stopped at his floor, he asked me pleasantly if I would step to one corner, so he could manage his chair better. "So sorry," he said, "to inconvenience you"-and a deep, heart-warming smile lighted his face as he said it.
When I left the elevator and went to my room, I could think of nothing but this cheerful cripple. So I hunted him up and asked him to tell me his story.
"It happened in 1929," he told me with a smile. "I had gone out to cut a load of hickory poles to stake the beans in my garden. I had loaded the poles on my Ford and started back home. Suddenly one pole slipped under the car and jammed the steering apparatus at the very moment I was making a sharp turn. The car shot over an embankment and hurled me against a tree. My spine was hurt. My legs were paralysed.
"I was twenty-four when that happened, and I have never taken a step since."
Twenty-four years old, and sentenced to a wheel-chair for the rest of his life! I asked him how he managed to take it so courageously, and he said: "I didn"t." He said he raged and rebelled. He fumed about his fate. But as the years dragged on, he found that his rebellion wasn"t getting him anything except bitterness. "I finally realised," he said, "that other people were kind and courteous to me. So the least I could do was to be kind and courteous to them."
I asked if he still felt, after all these years, that his accident had been a terrible misfortune, and he promptly said: "No." He said: "I"m almost glad now that it happened." He told me that after he got over the shock and resentment, he began to live in a different world. He began to read and developed a love for good literature. In fourteen years, he said, he had read at least fourteen hundred books; and those books had opened up new horizons for him and made his life richer than he ever thought possible. He began to listen to good music; and he is now thrilled by great symphonies that would have bored him before. But the biggest change was that he had time to think. "For the first time in my life," he said, "I was able to look at the world and get a real sense of values. I began to realise that most of the things I had been striving for before weren"t worth-while at all."
As a result of his reading, he became interested in politics, studied public questions, made speeches from his wheel-chair! He got to know people and people got to know him. Today Ben Fortson-still in his wheel-chair-is Secretary of State for the State of Georgia!
During the last thirty-five years, I have been conducting adult-education cla.s.ses in New York City, and I have discovered that one of the major regrets of many adults is that they never went to college. They seem to think that not having a college education is a great handicap. I know that this isn"t necessarily true because I have known thousands of successful men who never went beyond high school. So I often tell these students the story of a man I knew who had never finished even grade school. He was brought up in blighting poverty. When his father died, his father"s friends had to chip in to pay for the coffin in which he was buried. After his father"s death, his mother worked in an umbrella factory ten hours a day and then brought piecework home and worked until eleven o"clock at night.
The boy brought up in these circ.u.mstances went in for amateur dramatics put on by a club in his church. He got such a thrill out of acting that he decided to take up public speaking. This led him into politics. By the time he reached thirty, he was elected to the New York State legislature. But he was woefully unprepared for such a responsibility. In fact, he told me that frankly he didn"t know what it was all about. He studied the long, complicated bills that he was supposed to vote on-but, as far as he was concerned, those bills might as well have been written in the language of the Choctaw Indians. He was worried and bewildered when he was made a member of the committee on forests before he had ever set foot in a forest. He was worried and bewildered when he was made a member of the State Banking Commission before he had ever had a bank account. He himself told me that he was so discouraged that he would have resigned from the legislature if he hadn"t been ashamed to admit defeat to his mother. In despair, he decided to study sixteen hours a day and turn his lemon of ignorance into a lemonade of knowledge. By doing that, he transformed himself from a local politician into a national figure and made himself so outstanding that The New York Times called him "the best-loved citizen of New York".
I am talking about Al Smith.
Ten years after Al Smith set out on his programme of political self-education, he was the greatest living authority on the government of New York State. He was elected Governor of New York for four terms-a record never attained by any other man. In 1928, he was the Democratic candidate for President. Six great universities-including Columbia and Harvard-conferred honorary degrees upon this man who had never gone beyond grade school.
Al Smith himself told me that none of these things would ever have come to pa.s.s if he hadn"t worked hard sixteen hours a day to turn his minus into a plus.
Nietzsche"s formula for the superior man was "not only to bear up under necessity but to love it".
The more I have studied the careers of men of achievement the more deeply I have been convinced that a surprisingly large number of them succeeded because they started out with handicaps that spurred them on to great endeavour and great rewards. As William James said: "Our infirmities help us unexpectedly."
Yes, it is highly probable that Milton wrote better poetry because he was blind and that Beethoven composed better music because he was deaf.
Helen Keller"s brilliant career was inspired and made possible because of her blindness and deafness.
If Tchaikovsky had not been frustrated-and driven almost to suicide by his tragic marriage-if his own life had not been pathetic, he probably would never have been able to compose his immortal "Symphonic Pathetique".
If Dostoevsky and Tolstoy had not led tortured lives, they would probably never have been able to write their immortal novels.
"If I had not been so great an invalid," wrote the man who changed the scientific concept of life on earth-"if I had not been so great an invalid, I should not have done so much work as I have accomplished." That was Charles Darwin"s confession that his infirmities had helped him unexpectedly.
The same day that Darwin was born in England another baby was born in a log cabin in the forests of Kentucky. He, too, was helped by his infirmities. His name was Lincoln- Abraham Lincoln. If he had been reared in an aristocratic family and had had a law degree from Harvard and a happy married life, he would probably never have found in the depths of his heart the haunting words that he immortalised at Gettysburg, nor the sacred poem that he spoke at his second inauguration-the most beautiful and n.o.ble phrases ever uttered by a ruler of men: "With malice toward none; with charity for all ..."
Harry Emerson Fosd.i.c.k says in his book, The Power to See it Through; "There is a Scandinavian saying which some of us might well take as a rallying cry for our lives: "The north wind made the Vikings." Wherever did we get the idea that secure and pleasant living, the absence of difficulty, and the comfort of ease, ever of themselves made people either good or happy? Upon the contrary, people who pity themselves go on pitying themselves even when they are laid softly on a cushion, but always in history character and happiness have come to people in all sorts of circ.u.mstances, good, bad, and indifferent, when they shouldered their personal responsibility. So, repeatedly the north wind has made the Vikings."
Suppose we are so discouraged that we feel there is no hope of our ever being able to turn our lemons into lemonade-then here are two reasons why we ought to try, anyway-two reasons why we have everything to gain and nothing to lose.
Reason one: We may succeed.
Reason two: Even if we don"t succeed, the mere attempt to turn our minus into a plus will cause us to look forward instead of backward; it will replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts; it will release creative energy and spur us to get so busy that we won"t have either the time or the inclination to mourn over what is past and for ever gone.
Once when Ole Bull, the world-famous violinist, was giving a concert in Paris, the A string on his violin suddenly snapped. But Ole Bull simply finished the melody on three strings. "That is life," says Harry Emerson Fosd.i.c.k, "to have your A string snap and finish on three strings."
That is not only life. It is more than life. It is life triumphant!
If I had the power to do so, I would have these words of William Bolitho carved in eternal bronze and hung in every schoolhouse in the land: The most important thing in life is not to capitalize on your gains. Any fool can do that. The really important thing is to profit from your losses. That requires intelligence; and it makes the difference between a man of sense and a fool.
So, to cultivate a mental att.i.tude that will bring us peace and happiness, let"s do something about Rule 6: When fate hands us a lemon, let"s try to make a lemonade.
Chapter 18: How To Cure Melancholy In Fourteen Days.
When I started writing this book, I offered a two-hundred-dollar prize for the most helpful and inspiring true story on "How I Conquered Worry".
The three judges for this contest were: Eddie Rickenbacker, president, Eastern Air Lines; Dr. Stewart W. McClelland, president, Lincoln Memorial University; H. V. Kaltenborn, radio news a.n.a.lyst. However, we received two stories so superb that the judges found it impossible to choose between them. So we divided the prize. Here is one of the stories that tied for first prize-the story of C.R. Burton (who works for Whizzer Motor Sales of Missouri, Inc.), 1067 Commercial Street, Springfield, Missouri.
"I lost my mother when I was nine years old, and my father when I was twelve," Mr. Burton wrote me. "My father was killed, but my mother simply walked out of the house one day nineteen years ago; and I have never seen her since. Neither have I ever seen my two little sisters that she took with her. She never even wrote me a letter until after she had been gone seven years. My father was killed in an accident three years after Mother left. He and a partner bought a cafe in a small Missouri town; and while Father was away on a business trip, his partner sold the cafe for cash and skipped out. A friend wired Father to hurry back home; and in his hurry, Father was killed in a car accident at Salinas, Kansas. Two of my father"s sisters, who were poor and old and sick took three of the children into their homes. n.o.body wanted me and my little brother. We were left at the mercy of the town. We were haunted by the fear of being called orphans and treated as orphans. Our fears soon materialised, too.
I lived for a little while with a poor family in town. But times were hard and the head of the family lost his job, so they couldn"t afford to feed me any longer. Then Mr. and Mrs. Loftin took me to live with them on their farm eleven miles from town. Mr. Loftin was seventy years old, and sick in bed with shingles. He told me I could stay there "as long as I didn"t lie, didn"t steal, and did as I was told". Those three orders became my Bible. I lived by them strictly. I started to school, but the first week found me at home, bawling like a baby. The other children picked on me and poked fun at my big nose and said I was dumb and called me an "orphan brat". I was hurt so badly that I wanted to fight them; but Mr. Loftin, the farmer who had taken me in, said to me: "Always remember that it takes a bigger man to walk away from a fight than it does to stay and fight." I didn"t fight until one day a kid picked up some chicken manure from the schoolhouse yard and threw it in my face. I beat the h.e.l.l out of him; and made a couple of friends. They said he had it coming to him.
"I was proud of a new cap that Mrs. Loftin had bought me. One day one of the big girls jerked it off my head and filled it with water and ruined it. She said she filled it with water so that "the water would wet my thick skull and keep my popcorn brains from popping".
"I never cried at school, but I used to bawl it out at home. Then one day Mrs. Loftin gave me some advice that did away with all troubles and worries and turned my enemies into friends. She said: "Ralph, they won"t tease you and call you an "orphan brat" any more if you will get interested in them and see how much you can do for them." I took her advice. I studied hard; and I soon headed the cla.s.s. I was never envied because I went out of my way to help them.
"I helped several of the boys write their themes and essays. I wrote complete debates for some of the boys. One lad was ashamed to let his folks know that I was helping him. So he used to tell his mother he was going possum hunting. Then he would come to Mr. Loftin"s farm and tie his dogs up in the barn while I helped him with his lessons. I wrote book reviews for one lad and spent several evenings helping one of the girls on her math"s.
"Death struck our neighbourhood. Two elderly farmers died and one woman was deserted by her husband. I was the only male in four families. I helped these widows for two years. On my way to and from school, I stopped at their farms, cut wood for them, milked their cows, and fed and watered their stock. I was now blessed instead of cursed. I was accepted as a friend by everyone. They showed their real feelings when I returned home from the Navy. More than two hundred farmers came to see me the first day I was home. Some of them drove as far as eighty miles, and their concern for me was really sincere. Because I have been busy and happy trying to help other people, I have few worries; and I haven"t been called an "orphan brat" now for thirteen years."
Hooray for C.R. Burton! He knows how to win friends! And he also knows how to conquer worry and enjoy life.
So did the late Dr. Frank Loope, of Seattle, Washington. He was an invalid for twenty-three years. Arthritis. Yet Stuart Whithouse of the Seattle Star wrote me, saying: "I interviewed Dr. Loope many times; and I have never known a man more unselfish or a man who got more out of life."
How did this bed-ridden invalid get so much out of life? I"ll give you two guesses. Did he do it by complaining and criticising? No. ... By wallowing in self-pity and demanding that he be the centre of attention and everyone cater to him? No. ... Still wrong. He did it by adopting as his slogan the motto of the Prince of Wales: "Ich dien"-"I serve." He acc.u.mulated the names and addresses of other invalids and cheered both them and himself by writing happy, encouraging letters. In fact, he organised a letter-writing club for invalids and got them writing letters to one another. Finally, he formed a national organisation called the Shut-in Society.
As he lay in bed, he wrote an average of fourteen hundred letters a year and brought joy to thousands of invalids by getting radios and books for shut-ins.
What was the chief difference between Dr. Loope and a lot of other people? Just this: Dr. Loope had the inner glow of a man with a purpose, a mission. He had the joy of knowing that he was being used by an idea far n.o.bler and more significant than himself, instead of being as Shaw put it: "a self-centred, little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world would not devote itself to making him happy."
Here is the most astonishing statement that I ever read from the pen of a great psychiatrist. This statement was made by Alfred Adler. He used to say to his melancholia patients: "You can be cured in fourteen days if you follow this prescription. Try to think every day how you can please someone."
That statement sounds so incredible that I feel I ought to try to explain it by quoting a couple of pages from Dr. Adler"s splendid book, What Life Should Mean to You. (*) (By the way, there is a book you ought to read.) ----.
[*] Allen & Unwin Ltd.
"Melancholia," says Adler in What Life Should Mean to You: "is like a long-continued rage and reproach against others, though for the purpose of gaining care, sympathy and support, the patient seems only to be dejected about his own guilt. A melancholiac"s first memory is generally something like this: "I remember I wanted to lie on the couch, but my brother was lying there. I cried so much that he had to leave."
"Melancholiacs are often inclined to revenge themselves by committing suicide, and the doctor"s first care is to avoid giving them an excuse for suicide. I myself try to relieve the whole tension by proposing to them, as the first rule in treatment, "Never do anything you don"t like." This seems to be very modest, but I believe that it goes to the root of the whole trouble If a melancholiac is able to do anything he wants, whom can he accuse? What has he got to revenge himself for? "If you want to go to the theatre," I tell him, "or to go on a holiday, do it. If you find on the way that you don"t want to, stop it." It is the best situation anyone could be in. It gives a satisfaction to his striving for superiority. He is like G.o.d and can do what he pleases. On the other hand, it does not fit very easily into his style of life. He wants to dominate and accuse others and if they agree with him there is no way of dominating them. This rule is a great relief and I have never had a suicide among my patients.
"Generally the patient replies: "But there is nothing I like doing." I have prepared for this answer, because I have heard it so often. "Then refrain from doing anything you dislike," I say. Sometimes, however, he will reply: "I should like to stay in bed all day." I know that, if I allow it, he will no longer want to do it. I know that, if I hinder him, he will start a war. I always agree.
"This is one rule. Another attacks their style of life more directly. I tell them: "You can be cured in fourteen days if you follow this prescription. Try to think every day how you can please someone." See what this means to them. They are occupied with the thought. "How can I worry someone." The answers are very interesting. Some say: "This will be very easy for me. I have done it all my life." They have never done it. I ask them to think it over. They do not think it over. I tell them: "You can make use of all the time you spend when you are unable to go to sleep by thinking how you can please someone, and it will be a big step forward in your health." When I see them next day, I ask them: "Did you think over what I suggested?" They answer: "Last night I went to sleep as soon as I got to bed." All this must be done, of course, in a modest, friendly manner, without a hint of superiority.
"Others will answer: "I could never do it. I am so worried." I tell them: "Don"t stop worrying; but at the same time you can think now and then of others." I want to direct their interest always towards their fellows. Many say: "Why should I please others? Others do not try to please me." "You must think of your health," I answer. The others will suffer later on." It is extremely rare that I have found a patient who said: "I have thought over what you suggested." All my efforts are devoted towards increasing the social interest of the patient. I know that the real reason for his malady is his lack of co-operation and I want him to see it too. As soon as he can connect himself with his fellow men on an equal and co-operative footing, he is cured. ... The most important task imposed by religion has always been "Love thy neighbour". ... It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow man who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring.
... All that we demand of a human being, and the highest praise we can give him is that he should be a good fellow worker, a friend to all other men, and a true partner in love and marriage."
Dr. Adler urges us to do a good deed every day. And what is a good deed? "A good deed," said the prophet Mohammed, "is one that brings a smile of joy to the face of another."
Why will doing a good deed every day produce such astounding efforts on the doer? Because trying to please others will cause us to stop thinking of ourselves: the very thing that produces worry and fear and melancholia.
Mrs. William T. Moon, who operates the Moon Secretarial School, 521 Fifth Avenue, New York, didn"t have to spend two weeks thinking how she could please someone in order to banish her melancholy. She went Alfred Adler one better-no, she went Adler thirteen better. She banished her melancholy, not in fourteen days, but in one day, by thinking how she could please a couple of orphans.
It happened like this: "In December, five years ago," said Mrs. Moon, "I was engulfed in a feeling of sorrow and self-pity. After several years of happy married life, I had lost my husband. As the Christmas holidays approached, my sadness deepened. I had never spent a Christmas alone in all my life; and I dreaded to see this Christmas come. Friends had invited me to spend Christmas with them. But I did not feel up to any gaiety. I knew I would be a wet blanket at any party. So, I refused their kind invitations. As Christmas Eve approached, I was more and more overwhelmed with self-pity. True, I should have been thankful for many things, as all of us have many things for which to be thankful. The day before Christmas, I left my office at three o"clock in the afternoon and started walking aimlessly up Fifth Avenue, hoping that I might banish my self-pity and melancholy. The avenue was jammed with gay and happy crowds-scenes that brought back memories of happy years that were gone.
I just couldn"t bear the thought of going home to a lonely and empty apartment. I was bewildered. I didn"t know what to do. I couldn"t keep the tears back. After walking aimlessly for an hour or so, I found myself in front of a bus terminal. I remembered that my husband and I had often boarded an unknown bus for adventure, so I boarded the first bus I found at the station. After crossing the Hudson River and riding for some time, I heard the bus conductor say: "Last stop, lady." I got off. I didn"t even know the name of the town. It was a quiet, peaceful little place. While waiting for the next bus home, I started walking up a residential street. As I pa.s.sed a church, I heard the beautiful strains of "Silent Night". I went in. The church was empty except for the organist. I sat down unnoticed in one of the pews. The lights from the gaily decorated Christmas tree made the decorations seem like myriads of stars dancing in the moonbeams. The long-drawn cadences of the music-and the fact that I had forgotten to eat since morning-made me drowsy. I was weary and heavy-laden, so I drifted off to sleep.
"When I awoke, I didn"t know where I was. I was terrified. I saw in front of me two small children who had apparently come in to see the Christmas tree. One, a little girl, was pointing at me and saying: "I wonder if Santa Clause brought her". These children were also frightened when I awoke. I told them that I wouldn"t hurt them. They were poorly dressed. I asked them where their mother and daddy were. "We ain"t got no mother and daddy," they said. Here were two little orphans much worse off than I had ever been. They made me feel ashamed of my sorrow and self-pity. I showed them the Christmas tree and then took them to a drugstore and we had some refreshments, and I bought them some candy and a few presents. My loneliness vanished as if by magic. These two orphans gave me the only real happiness and self-forgetfulness that I had had in months.
As I chatted with them, I realised how lucky I had been. I thanked G.o.d that all my Christmases as a child had been bright with parental love and tenderness. Those two little orphans did far more for me than I did for them. That experience showed me again the necessity of making other people happy in order to be happy ourselves. I found that happiness is contagious. By giving, we receive. By helping someone and giving out love, I had conquered worry and sorrow and self-pity, and felt like a new person. And I was a new person-not only then, but in the years that followed." I could fill a book with stories of people who forgot themselves into health and happiness. For example, let"s take the case of Margaret Tayler Yates, one of the most popular women in the United States Navy.
Mrs. Yates is a writer of novels, but none of her mystery stories is half so interesting as the true story of what happened to her that fateful morning when the j.a.panese struck our fleet at Pearl Harbour. Mrs. Yates had been an invalid for more than a year: a bad heart. She spent twenty-two out of every twenty-four hours in bed. The longest journey that she undertook was a walk into the garden to take a sunbath. Even then, she had to lean on the maid"s arm as she walked. She herself told me that in those days she expected to be an invalid for the balance of her life. "I would never have really lived again," she told me," if the j.a.ps had not struck Pearl Harbour and jarred me out of my complacency.
"When this happened," Mrs. Yates said, as she told her story, "everything was chaos and confusion. One bomb struck so near my home, the concussion threw me out of bed. Army trucks rushed out to Hickam Field, Scofield Barracks, and Kaneohe Bay Air Station, to bring Army and Navy wives and children to the public schools. There the Red Cross telephoned those who had extra rooms to take them in. The Red Cross workers knew that I had a telephone beside my bed, so they asked me to be a clearing-house of information. So I kept track of where Army and Navy wives and children were being housed, and all Navy and Army men were instructed by the Red Cross to telephone me to find out where their families were.