The woman of to-morrow

by Helen M. Winslow

It rests with us and no one else to strike the notes that give the purest melody. There is the life of pretence, with its artificial standards, and the life of honest endeavor, where every note rings true; in other words, a whole world of real people, where each man and each woman is measured by their own true work, where friendships are honest, where laughs are hearty and tears are real, where lives are happiest because they are lived simplest, where the air is pure and the clothes you wear do not signify.

Then, too, think what trouble might be avoided if we only mastered the power of silence. Especially is this true when some controversy arises. It is hard indeed to be at all interested in and to sit still when a heated discussion is on. But it is a good discipline. Next time just shut your teeth together and say to yourself, “After all, what does it matter?” You will soon find that other people are doing all the quarreling. It is wonderful how small a compass many controversies can be crowded into when you really stop to consider how much of them are worth while.

We all know how impossible it is to do our best in the home if we have to live in the spirit of criticism. If there is some one in the family whom it is impossible to please, who stands ready to ascribe to us motives unworthy of any good woman, and to deny that we have anything but self-seeking and selfishness behind all our actions, it becomes impossible for us to live out the best that is in us, or to keep anger and jealousy and suspicion out of our own hearts, after a time at least. Few women there are but know or have known what it means to have such an element somewhere in the family connections. But, even if some one says hard things about you, the most powerful weapon is silence. The most contemptuous or stinging retort has not the force nor the strength of simply saying nothing. For there is nothing which you could say that is so hard on your adversary as to ignore her argument.

Vanity enters so largely into the make-up of most mortals that it must be recognized. When a gossip brings a tale about some friend, there is no rebuke so keenly felt as a dignified and sober silence. When such a story is brought and you ask some question, or even seem to acquiesce, you are pretty sure to be reported as having told the story. We all have days, too, which seem to be filled with petty trials and miserable crosses. The woman at home as well as the man in business has to bear these until every nerve seems bare. Small things assume huge proportions, and life seems almost unendurable. We cannot see a bit beyond the little circle of our trials, and discouragements loom large on our horizon. Nothing is right simply because we are not right.

Do not give way to ill-temper and snap up those around you. Go where you can be alone—out-of-doors if possible; if not, in a room by yourself. Say a little prayer. Relax your muscles. Think of the country, the mountains, the sea, a starry night—anything but your troubles. Stay in the silence fifteen minutes. There is wonderful magic in it.

“Bear ye one another’s burdens” may mean much, but there is a far greater nobility in silently bearing your own. One need not be unfriendly nor unsocial, but one should cultivate the power of silence and the habit of silence. If you do not read another book get into the habit of reading daily bits from Miss Call’s “The Power of Silence,” and her “As a Matter of Course,” and Lida Churchill’s “The Magic Seven.” These preach the gospel of relaxation which, translated, means the habit of not caring. That man succeeds best who flings his soul into his life-work and does his level best, and then does not sit up nights worrying over the result. Throw off your cares and anxieties. Drop everything and go out-of-doors. You remember what the immortal Samantha Allen said about worrying at nights? “Why, how often have I laid for hours worrying about things and made ’em out like mountains, only to see ’em drop off and fade away by the morning light, dwindlin’ down to mere nothin’s.” We have all been there. If we could live over again, now, all the time we have spent in fruitless worrying, in sleepless nights, we should have several years added to our three score and ten. Worry means always and invariably inhibition of associations and loss of effective power. The sovereign cure for worry is faith—religious faith, or, if you prefer to call it so, optimism; perhaps it all amounts to the same thing. The turbulent billows of the fretful surface leave the deep parts of the ocean undisturbed, and to her who has a hold on vaster and more permanent realities, the hourly vicissitudes of personal destiny seem relatively insignificant. Whether one is really a “professor of religion” or not, the really religious person is that one who is unshakable and full of equanimity and calmly ready for anything that may come.

As the psychologist would tell us, if we wish our trains of ideation and volition to be copious and effective, we must form the habit of freeing them from the inhibitive influence of egoistic preoccupation about results; and such a habit can be formed if we will set ourselves to doing it. Prudence and duty and ambition and self-regard have their places in our lives and we need not banish them, but do not let them interfere with our real selves. In other words, when we have decided on a plan of action, stick to it and do not worry about the outcome. Unclamp your mental machinery and let it go without fret or worry. It is the people who fling worry to the winds and keep up their nervous tone that succeed. All of which is applicable to growing old, even if you do think I have wandered from my subject.

Women have been too long trained to the need of feeling responsible about something. Some women cannot buy a paper of pins without a long argument with themselves as to whether they shall be sharp-pointed or blunt. Most of us fritter away our strength in useless fussing over nothing at some time in our day. What we need is the toning down of our moral and mental tensions.

Some women, a few, are born with the gift of self-poise; others acquire it, and many never know the meaning of the word; but self-poise is never thrust upon any of us. What a comfortable sister she is who has it. How safe and happy we are in her presence. For she looks upon life calmly and with such a large vision that we forget how great the petty affairs of every-day living had loomed on our horizon before we came to know her. She has learned to close her eyes to such unpleasant things as cannot be helped and to smooth away those that can; she closes her ears to words that insidiously steal away one’s peace of mind and to utter the soft words that turn away wrath. Outside influences are never allowed to canker or to disturb the serenity of her soul; and, if she is a housekeeper, her family are allowed to dwell in comfort. In other words, she is not the kind of woman who chases through life with a dust-cloth in one hand and a fly-killer in the other, and a poorly swept room or a spot on the tablecloth at breakfast table are not the excuse for making the whole family miserable for the day. So many women seem to think that anything that causes them uneasiness to them is sufficient cause for making everybody else around them unhappy.