’Tis something if at last,
Though only for a flash, a man may see
Clear-eyed the future as he sees the past,
From doubt, or fear, or hope’s illusion free.
Did Sill mean that even death may be preferable to that haunting uncertainty which is the worst of the blues? Early in life he had more than his share of it, but he lived it down.
If any man can look on birds and flowers and most women and children and some men, and upon the manifold beauties of earth and sea and sky, from dawn on to dawn, if any man can realize that we might have been driven by pain more effectively than even attracted by pleasure, to feed ourselves and reproduce ourselves—if any man can see these things, and not be certain that behind the universe there is intention, and effective intention, to produce happiness, that man simply has, at least temporarily, an abnormal mind. But he is the very kind of man who gets the blues. All that can be done for him is to help him see the other side of the shield. As for mere argument, sometimes one might almost as well use it against paresis as against pessimism.
Neither can much be done for fools. But there are degrees and kinds of fools. The worst are probably those who, having committed a folly of lasting consequences, sulk over it instead of facing it cheerfully and trying to make the best of it. When we can’t get happiness, we can at least get discipline. But the hopeless thing about a fool is that he can never be convinced that he is one: his follies are always in the past tense.
Next to doubting too much, is expecting too much. Aside from the few great disasters of a lifetime, the worst things are proverbially those that never happen. This paper has not much to say about things that do happen. They may involve feelings not to be remonstrated against, or even mentioned lightly. But still those feelings, often very sacred, should, like everything else, be limited to their proper range. The chief cause (and the chief consequence) of the blues are borrowed troubles. One of the most effective ways of borrowing them is to take for granted that a bad situation will not right itself, and then, instead of merely taking care of the immediate issue, letting the imagination work at all possible issues, and devising means of taking care of them. This is often promoted by a mistaken notion that such constant thought over the matter is a duty—that if the worst comes, one will at least have done one’s best. Generally one’s best really is to drop the subject. But that is not so easy. Just as the tongue always seeks the uneasy tooth, so the mind always seeks the uneasy question. But the tooth is not always under control, and the question generally is, or ought to be. Rigid discipline will develop a habit of leaving it alone except as something can be done about it. The true method generally is to decide what the moment admits of, and then to await the next real occasion for decision, and meanwhile to keep the mind occupied with other things. Usually thought between times is worse than wasted. An occasion when it is not, is usually not between times, but one of the times. Of course one does not want to be taken unawares, but not a tithe of the imagined situations ever occur, and those actually to be met are often not foreseen at all: so most of the devising is wasted, attention is distracted from the immediate requirements of life, and time is spent in a continuous overshadowing of the blues. All this takes tissue, and when the next issue comes, the power to meet it is dulled. The strength of the great fighters—generals, lawyers, parliamentarians, depends largely on temperaments which preserve them from such waste of their powers. “The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man dies but one,” and exaggerated anticipation of evil is simply cowardice.