Akin to doing work that never is called for, is over-refinement in needed work. True, “perfection consists in trifles,” but don’t forget that “trifles can’t make perfection.” There comes a point beyond which the most conscientious workman can really do no more. Part of the equipment of a true artist is the capacity to recognize that point. After every essential thing is done, there remain non-essentials which may as well go one way as the other. They raise the hardest questions, if they are permitted to raise any, because they are as nearly balanced as the load of Burridon’s ass. Moiling over them is threshing straw: it leads to no result but fatigue and monomania. Monomania is generally the first step in insanity, and nearly every step in insanity is attended by the blues.
But objections to superfluous work and over-refined work, are not objections to hard work, especially when one is in trouble. Carlyle says (I quote from memory): “To him who can earnestly and truly work, there is no need for despair.” But that advice is generally superfluous for an American. He is more apt to need advice to play hard—to mount his hobby or get hold of a new one, and ride it hard.
It is especially bad to let the mind run on worries at night; and to take them to bed with one is madness. This is a special reason for seeking society or the theatre: other people, in real life or on the stage (better in real life, of course, because there one has to talk back) can best pull one out of oneself when one’s own powers are utterly inadequate. When actual causes of anxiety seem overwhelming, if one can be made to forget them for a time, hope comes into the ascendant.
One most important point is that worries are apt to settle themselves during sleep. There may be a subconscious mental action, or one may wake up with the thinking powers invigorated; but whatever the reason may be, people go to bed in perplexity, and soon after waking, do certainly often find that all the considerations have slipped into their relative places, and that the perplexity has cleared.
The best of all remedies is perhaps the most difficult, though not impossible. It is to “rise superior” to your troubles—to convince yourself, lift yourself, force yourself into the feeling of directorship—of competent and confident directorship of all your affairs. Add “with God’s help” if you want to: for that may back up our worthy intentions more even than our ancestors began to realize—whatever they professed to believe. This feeling of calm adequacy does much to secure adequacy, and what is of perhaps more importance, compels peace.
But adequacy is only adequacy to do the best that circumstances permit. To attempt more than circumstances permit is at once inadequacy—to put yourself on the weak side of a false equation. Attempt only what you can do, and you never need fail. Yet unless you attempt the best you can do, you do fail—fail just so far as the difference between the actual and the best possible. But if you are reasonably brave and wise, that difference will be slight; and the healthy conscience, like the law, takes no account of trifles.
Shoot your arrow at the sun, and hitch your wagon to a star, all you want to—as religious exercise; but in your daily work shoot only when game is within range, and hitch only to something which will hold tight, and is reasonably sure to draw.
And don’t be misled by shrewd Yankees who make divine phrases, but who regulate their actions in daily life as cannily as other Yankees who never make phrases at all.