I had the privilege of interviewing
Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher
(1935–1961) of one of the most fa-
mous newspapers in the world, The
New York Times. Mr. Sulzberger told
me that when the Second World War
flamed across Europe, he was so
stunned, so worried about the future,
that he found it almost impossible to
sleep. He would frequently get out of
bed in the middle of the night, take
some canvas and tubes of paint, look
in the mirror, and try to paint a portrait
of himself. He didn’t know anything
about painting, but he painted anyway, to get his mind off his worries. Mr.
Sulzberger told me that he was never
able to banish his worries and find
peace until he had adopted as his
motto five words from a church hymn:
One step enough for me.
Lead, kindly Light …
Keep thou my feet: I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for
me.
At about the same time, a young
man in uniform—somewhere in Eu-
rope—was learning the same lesson.
His name was Ted Bengermino, of
Baltimore, Maryland—and he had worried himself into a first-class case
of combat fatigue.
“In April, 1945,” wrote Ted Benger-
mino, “I had worried until I had devel-
oped what doctors call a ‘spasmodic
transverse colon’—a condition that
produced intense pain. If the war
hadn’t ended when it did, I am sure I
would have had a complete physical
breakdown.
“I was utterly exhausted. I was a
Graves Registration, noncom-
missioned Officer for the 94th Infantry
Division. My work was to help set up
and maintain records of all men killed
in action, missing in action, and hospitalized. I also had to help dis-
inter the bodies of both Allied and
enemy soldiers who had been killed
and hastily buried in shallow graves
during the pitch of battle. I had to
gather up the personal effects of these
men and see that they were sent back
to parents or closest relatives who
would prize these personal effects so
much. I was constantly worried for
fear we might be making embarrassing
and serious mistakes. I was worried
about whether or not I would come
through all this. I was worried about
whether I would live to hold my only
child in my arms—a son of sixteen months, whom I had never seen. I was
so worried and exhausted that I lost
thirty-four pounds. I was so frantic
that I was almost out of my mind. I
looked at my hands. They were hardly
more than skin and bones. I was terri-
fied at the thought of going home a
physical wreck. I broke down and
sobbed like a child. I was so shaken
that tears welled up every time I was
alone. There was one period soon
after the Battle of the Bulge started
that I wept so often that I almost gave
up hope of ever being a normal
human being again.
“I ended up in an Army dispensary. An Army doctor gave me some advice
which has completely changed my life.
After giving me a thorough physical
examination, he informed me that my
troubles were mental. ‘Ted,’ he said, ‘I
want you to think of your life as an hour-
glass. You know there are thousands of
grains of sand in the top of the hourglass;
and they all pass slowly and evenly
through the narrow neck in the middle.
Nothing you or I could do would make
more than one grain of sand pass
through this narrow neck without im-
pairing the hourglass. You and I and
everyone else are like this hourglass.
When we start in the morning, there arehundreds of tasks which we feel that we
must accomplish that day, but if we do
not take them one at a time and let
them pass through the day slowly and
evenly, as do the grains of sand passing
through the narrow neck of the hour-
glass, then we are bound to break our
own physical or mental structure.’
“I have practiced that philosophy
ever since that memorable day that an
Army doctor gave it to me. ‘One grain
of sand at a time…. One task at a
time.’ That advice saved me physically
and mentally during the war, and it
has also helped me in my present
position of Public Relations and Advertising Director for the Adcrafters
Printing & Offset Co., Inc. I found the
same problems arising in business
that had arisen during the war: a score
of things had to be done at once—and
there was little time to do them. We
were low in stocks. We had new forms
to handle, new stock arrangements,
changes of address, opening and clos-
ing offices, and so on. Instead of get-
ting taut and nervous, I remembered
what the doctor had told me. ‘One
grain of sand at a time. One task at a
time.’ By repeating those words to my-
self over and over, I accomplished my
tasks in a more efficient manner and I did my work without the confused and
jumbled feeling that had almost
wrecked me on the battlefield.”
One of the most appalling com-
ments on our present way of life is
that at one time half of all the beds in
our hospitals were reserved for pa-
tients with nervous and mental trou-
bles, patients who had collapsed
under the crushing burden of accumu-
lated yesterdays and fearful tomor-
rows. Yet a vast majority of those peo-
ple could have avoided those hospi-
tals—could have led happy, useful
lives—if they had only heeded the
words of Jesus: “Have no anxiety aboutthe morrow”; or the words of Sir
William Osler: “Live in day-tight com-
partments.”
You and I are standing this very
second at the meeting place of two
eternities: the vast past that has en-
dured forever, and the future that is
plunging on to the last syllable of
recorded time. We can’t possibly live
in either of those eternities—no, not
even for one split second. But, by try-
ing to do so, we can wreck both our
bodies and our minds. So let’s be con-
tent to live the only time we can pos-
sibly live: from now until bedtime.
“Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall,” wrote
Robert Louis Stevenson. “Anyone can
do his work, however hard, for one
day. Anyone can live sweetly, patiently,
lovingly, purely, till the sun goes
down. And this is all that life really
means.”