Therefore, keep happy.
“Anxiety (which includes fear) saps more life in a day than work does in a week.” Anxiety is unnecessary, unproductive, destructive work. It is hard work. It is sinful work.
We must remember how prevalent are the states of mind in which fear is one of the factors. For fear is a factor in worry, and usually even in anger, and in depression. These words from M. J. M. Hickson’s “Healer” are worth reading:—
“We have very seldom reflected upon the fact that fear runs like a baleful thread through the whole web of our life from beginning to end. We are born into the atmosphere of fear and dread, and the mother who bore us had lived in the same atmosphere for weeks and months before we were born. We are surrounded in infancy and childhood by clouds of fear and apprehension on the part of our parents, nurses, and friends. As we advance in life, we become instinctively, or by experience, afraid of almost everything. We are afraid of our parents, afraid of our teachers, afraid of our playmates, afraid of ghosts, afraid of rules and regulations and punishments, afraid of the doctor, the dentist, the surgeon. Our adult life is a state of chronic anxiety, which is fear in a milder form. We are afraid of failure in business, afraid of disappointments and mistakes, afraid of enemies, open or concealed; afraid of poverty, afraid of public opinion, afraid of accidents, of sickness, of death, and unhappiness after death. Man is like a haunted animal, from the cradle to the grave, the victim of real or imaginary fears, not only his own, but those reflected upon him from the superstitions, self-deceptions, sensory illusions, false beliefs, and concrete errors of the whole human race, past and present.
“Fear not only affects the mind and the nervous and muscular tissues, but the molecular chemical transformations of the organic network, even to the skin, the hair, and the teeth. This might be expected of a passion that disturbs the whole mind, which is represented or externalised in the whole body.
“How does fear operate upon the body to produce sickness? By paralysing the nerve centres, especially those of the vasomotor nerves, thus producing not only muscular relaxation, but capillary congestions of all kinds. This condition of the system invites attack, and there is no resilience or power of resistance. The gates of the citadel have been opened from within, and the enemy may enter at any point.”
Therefore keep happy.
First because, once again, non-happiness is a mistake. It acts, as I said just now, in a vicious circle, increasing itself. It poisons the blood, and this very poisoning tends to produce more non-happiness. It radiates itself, and is infectious. It inclines to become a fixed and sub-conscious habit. It sinks down into the sub-conscious self, and afterwards expresses itself in various ways which (as Psychoanalysts show) are not usually associated with their true mental cause. It is toxic, and produces non-health and non-efficiency, by wasting power and force; by bringing fatigue; by encouraging bad sleep; by injuring the whole body; by cramping the energies; by “distracting” the body and mind, and thus hindering concentration; by impeding the circulation, and the elimination of waste-matters; and by upsetting the rhythm and the deepness and thoroughness of the breathing, and all the vibrations of the physical system. Besides, it is ugly. It militates against financial success, and against social success—for who wants a non-happy acquaintance?—and against intellectual success.
Consider this. Non-happiness is liable to make one’s work poor and inferior, difficult, tiring, and wanting in foresight and in perspective.
It does not help. As Ian Maclaren said: