Most women live in a state of mental turmoil the greater part of their lives. Self-poise seems to be the rarest of virtues among women. We allow ourselves to be continually stirred up over trifles, to be annoyed by things not worth minding. We allow petty criticisms to burn into our very souls. A disparaging word, a thoughtless remark, the slightest opposition to our pet scheme, are allowed to disturb the unruffled peace that is our birthright, and we either suffer agonies in silence or we let ourselves down to undignified wrangling.
Or, if we have no immediate cause for trouble outside ourselves, we worry. As Helen Watterson Moody neatly puts it: “Women are disposed to take things too seriously and to dissipate vital force in that nervous debauch known as worrying.” And she very wisely goes on to say that every woman ought to be obliged by some law to spend an hour or two a day absolutely alone and unrelaxed, that the whirling mind and quivering nerves might hush themselves with the blessedness of silence.
Self-poise would be the natural result, however impractical the proposition may appear. Some women are born with the gift of self-poise; but most of us have to acquire it or, worse, get along the best or the worst way we can without. It is never thrust upon us.
Once in a while we come across a woman who is blessed with it; and oh, what a comfortable creature she is—comfortable and comforting. Trying situations and trying people are as nothing to her. Some one has likened this power to keep one’s poise to an oil which makes the machinery of life run smoothly. Better than that, it is an elevated plane that holds those who walk thereon far above the mire of petty smallnesses of wrong living and thinking.
There is a man in Boston who has, naturally, a quick, irritable temper, but who is noted for his uniform gentleness and patience in dealing with the hundreds of people with whom he comes in contact every day. In his office hangs a placard with the following inscription, which I recommend to housekeepers, mothers, business women and everybody else. It runs thus:
“An American poet has said:
“‘It’s easy enough to be pleasant
When life flows along like a song;
But the man worth while