WORRY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 17, 20 January 1934, Page 3 (Supplement)

WORRY.

A MOST EXPENSIVE GUEST.

CAUSED BY FEARS,

(By JENNIE WAIN.) It is only human to worry, it seems! Especially in these harassing days of straitened finance and gruelling economy. But, oh! what an unpleasant guest it is to have to take round everywhere. What an awful drain on the physical and mental resources; what a menace to vitality, hope, courage, and even life Hsclf!

It is a nagging day companion, and a nightmare of a bedfellow. In fact, there is not one single good word to be said for this universal plague, and yet it continues to flutter its black wings over thousands of us luckless mortals, only lifting its baleful influence

when the victim is either half way to the asylum or pa«st caring for anything any more.

It is such an unnecessary evil, too, which makes its talons all tho sharper when once wo have grasped the futility of it all. Hard work never killed anybody yet, but worry has swept millions away on its relentless tide.

But what to do about it is the next question. It is so easy to talk, and innumerable books have been written without containing one grain of help to the bewildered searcher. But, in reality, there is only one fact to grasp. And that is the understanding that worry is only another name for feai, and that until fear of everything or everybody is completely removed from the consciousness worry will continue. Onco fear is overcome, nothing has any power to harm us, and we arc gods indeed.

But it is certainly not an easy matter to tackle, since we have centuries of superstition behind us all, carrying with it all sorts of dark and mystic fears and apprehensions, which are so deeply embedded that it seems impossible at first glance ever to eradicate them. However, it can be done, and it has been done, over and over again. As lonas faith and knowledge sit at the steering wheel there is no possible chance°of being at the mercy of every adverse wind, or chance circumstance. With alt the tremendous strides that have been made in invention, science, art and culture of all descriptions, it always seems to me terribly sad that the world is only just learning how to live, which is surely the first and most important thing after all! When we once stop to study the fact that many of the greatest men in the world, statesmen, poets, painters, writers and musicians have gone to an untimely end solely because of tho corroding power of worry in one shape or another, either political, financial or domestic, we realise its suicidal tendencies. And we learn that the mil id, whatsoever its own particular - > must be absolutely unclouded from any shadow of gloom or fear of any de l cr 'P" tion before it can produce its finest work, or faithfully fulfil the destiny to which it was born.