Yes, that is all that life requires of
us; but Mrs. E. K. Shields, of Saginaw,
Michigan, was driven to despair—
even to the brink of suicide—before
she learned to live just till bedtime. “In
1937, I lost my husband,” Mrs. Shields
said as she told me her story. “I was
very depressed—and almost penni-
less. I wrote my former employer, Mr. Leon Roach, of the Roach-Fowler
Company of Kansas City, and got my
old job back. I had formerly made my
living selling World Books to rural and
town school boards. I had sold my car
two years previously when my hus-
band became ill; but I managed to
scrape together enough money to put
a down payment on a used car and
started out to sell books again.
“I had thought that getting back on
the road would help relieve my depres-
sion; but driving alone and eating
alone was almost more than I could
take. Some of the territory was not
very productive, and I found it hard to make those car payments, small as
they were.
“In the spring of 1938, I was work-
ing out of Versailles, Missouri. The
schools were poor, the roads bad; I
was so lonely and discouraged that at
one time I even considered suicide. It
seemed that success was impossible.
I had nothing to live for. I dreaded get-
ting up each morning and facing life. I
was afraid of everything: afraid I could
not meet the car payments; afraid I
could not pay my room rent; afraid I
would not have enough to eat. I was
afraid my health was failing and I had
no money for a doctor. All that kept me from suicide were the thoughts
that my sister would be deeply
grieved, and that I did not have
enough money to pay my funeral ex-
penses.
“Then one day I read an article that
lifted me out of my despondence and
gave me the courage to go on living. I
shall never cease to be grateful for one
inspiring sentence in that article. It
said: ‘Every day is a new life to a wise
man.’ I typed that sentence out and
pasted it on the windshield of my car,
where I saw it every minute I was driv-
ing. I found it wasn’t so hard to live
only one day at a time. I learned to forget the yesterdays and to not think
of the tomorrows. Each morning I said
to myself, ‘Today is a new life.’
“I have succeeded in overcoming
my fear of loneliness, my fear of want.
I am happy and fairly successful now
and have a lot of enthusiasm and love
for life. I know now that I shall never
again be afraid, regardless of what life
hands me. I know now that I don’t
have to fear the future. I know now
that I can live one day at a time—and
that ‘Every day is a new life to a wise
man.’ “
Who do you suppose wrote this
verse: Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He, who can call to-day his own:
He who, secure within, can say:
“To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have
liv’d to-day.”
Those words sound modern, don’t
they? Yet they were written thirty years
before Christ was born, by the Roman
poet Horace.
One of the most tragic things I
know about human nature is that all of
us tend to put off living. We are all
dreaming of some magical rose gar-
den over the horizon—instead of
enjoying the roses that are blooming
outside our windows today. Why are we such fools—such trag-
ic fools?
“How strange it is, our little proces-
sion of life!” wrote Stephen Leacock.
“The child says, ‘When I am a big
boy.’ But what is that? The big boy
says, ‘When I grow up.’ And then,
grown up, he says, ‘When I get mar-
ried.’ But to be married, what is that
after all? The thought changes to
‘When I’m able to retire.’ And then,
when retirement comes, he looks back
over the landscape traversed; a cold
wind seems to sweep over it; some-
how he has missed it all, and it is
gone. Life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue of every day and
hour.”
The late Edward S. Evans of Detroit
almost killed himself with worry be-
fore he learned that life “is in the liv-
ing, in the tissue of every day and
hour.” Brought up in poverty, Edward
Evans made his first money by selling
newspapers, then worked as a grocer’s
clerk. Later, with seven people depen-
dent upon him for bread and butter,
he got a job as an assistant librarian.
Small as the pay was, he was afraid to
quit. Eight years passed before he
could summon up the courage to start
out on his own. But once he started, he built up an original investment of
fifty-five borrowed dollars into a busi-
ness of his own that made him twenty
thousand dollars a year. Then came a
frost, a killing frost. He endorsed a big
note for a friend—and the friend went
bankrupt. Quickly on top of that dis-
aster came another: the bank in which
he had all his money collapsed. He
not only lost every cent he had, but
was plunged into debt for sixteen
thousand dollars. His nerves couldn’t
take it. “I couldn’t sleep or eat,” he
told me. “I became strangely ill. Worry
and nothing but worry,” he said,
“brought on this illness. One day as I was walking down the street, I fainted
and fell on the sidewalk. I was no
longer able to walk. I was put to bed
and my body broke out in boils. These
boils turned inward until just lying in
bed was agony. I grew weaker every
day. Finally my doctor told me that I
had only two more weeks to live. I was
shocked. I drew up my will, and then
lay back in bed to await my end. No
use now to struggle or worry. I gave
up, relaxed, and went to sleep. I hadn’t
slept two hours in succession for
weeks; but now with my earthly prob-
lems drawing to an end, I slept like a
baby. My exhausting weariness began to disappear. My appetite returned. I
gained weight.
“A few weeks later, I was able to
walk with crutches. Six weeks later, I
was able to go back to work. I had
been making twenty thousand dollars
a year; but I was glad now to get a job
for thirty dollars a week. I got a job
selling blocks to put behind the
wheels of automobiles when they are
shipped by freight. I had learned my
lesson now. No more worry for me—
no more regret about what had hap-
pened in the past—no more dread of
the future. I concentrated all my time,
energy, and enthusiasm into selling those blocks.”
Edward S. Evans shot up fast now.
In a few years, he was president of the
company—the Evans Products Com-
pany. It has been listed on the New
York Stock Exchange for years. If you
ever fly over Greenland you may land
on Evans Field—a flying field named
in his honor. Yet Edward S. Evans
never would have achieved these
victories if he hadn’t learned to live in
day-tight compartments.
You will recall that the White Queen
said: “The rule is jam tomorrow and
jam yesterday but never jam today.”
Most of us are like that—stewing about yesterday’s jam and worrying
about tomorrow’s jam—instead of
spreading today’s jam thick on our
bread right now.
Even the great French philosopher,
Montaigne, made that mistake. “My
life,” he said, “has been full of terrible
misfortunes most of which never hap-
pened.” So has mine—so has yours.
“Think,” said Dante, “that this day
will never dawn again.” Life is slipping
away with incredible speed. We are
racing through space at the rate of
nineteen miles every second. Today is
our most precious possession. It is
our only sure possession. That is the philosophy of Lowell
Thomas. I recently spent a weekend at
his farm; and I noticed that he had
these words from Psalm CXVIII
framed and hanging on the walls of
his broadcasting studio where he
would see them often:
This is the day which the Lord hath
made;
we will rejoice and be glad in it.
The writer John Ruskin had on his
desk a simple piece of stone on which
was carved one word: TODAY. And
while I haven’t a piece of stone on my
desk, I do have a poem pasted on my mirror where I can see it when I shave
every morning—a poem that Sir
William Osler always kept on his
desk—a poem written by the famous
Indian dramatist, Kalidasa:
Salutation to the Dawn
Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your
existence:
The bliss of growth
The glory of action
The splendor of beauty,
For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision, But today well lived makes every yes-
terday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day!
Such is the salutation to the dawn.
So, the first thing you should know
about worry is this: if you want to keep
it out of your life, do what Sir William
Osler did—
- Shut the iron doors on the past
and the future. Live in Day-tight
Compartments.
Why not ask yourself these ques-
tions, and write down the answers? 1. Do I tend to put off living in the
present in order to worry about
the future, or to yearn for some
“magical rose garden over the
horizon”?
- Do I sometimes embitter the
present by regretting things that
happened in the past—that are
over and done with? - Do I get up in the morning deter-
mined to “Seize the day”—to get
the utmost out of these twenty-
four hours? - Can I get more out of life by “liv-
ing in day-tight compartments”? - When shall I start to do this? Next week? … Tomorrow? …
Today?
If you liked this chapter comment bellow to read chapter 2 from this amazing book :)