MUCH ADO ABOUT WHAT?

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 188, 6 May 1937, Page 6

MUCH ADO ABOUT WHAT?

Insidious Microbe of Fussiness Lurking in even.the Sanest Awaits its Chance ■'PHERE are people who see a flick of cigarette ash as a mountain of uncleanliness, people to whom a crooked picture is like a physical itch in the finger-tips, who would rather eat mud than non-wholemeal bread. Fussy people are tiresome, but there lurks in all of us the insidious microbe of their disease. So examine yourself tenderly after reading this article and consider whether some things you do conscientiously are really worth doing at all.

T WENT dining wirh a woman who chewed each mouthful 14 times. At first I talked to her, brightly, chirpily, on topics of the day. Then I moved more sombrely to family history, anecdotes and reminiscences. I made a last stand at the weather and lapsed into silence. For my companion's replies to my neatest conversational sallies were spoken in monosyllables and were laconic to the point of discourtesy.

Slowly it dawned upon me that I was int;t rupting her counting. Thereafter I sat staring fascinated at. the rhythmical snap of her jaws—and reflecting upon the evils of becoming obsessed with the importance of trifles.

Not that I would for the world belittle the value of thoroughly masticating the food—any more than I would dare to say physical culture was harmful. These things are excellent, done in moderation and according to rules of common sense rather than habit. But too meticulous chewing makes a very dull companion, and an excess of physical culture ends in a muscle-bound condition.

Fussing over health is, however, hardly as bad as fussing over babies. The most irritating fussers I know are mothers who never see a two-inch puddle but they expect their child to drown in it, and never bear a motorcar passing without suspecting that the driver is determined to knock down their man.

They waste half their energy in useless worrying and pester the lives out of their families, until they, too, begin to believe that Che wind will give them pneumonia if it strikes beiow the Adam’s apple, and fate will punish the woman who tosses her hat on a chair instead of putting it neatly on the shelf. For warning about the pitfalls of fussing, read the novelist Arnold Bennett la his book on “Self and SelfManagement.” Ways of Fussers. JJE writes: “The complete fusser" has slowly convinced himself that the proper fulfilment of his destiny depends absolutely upon about 10,000 different things. And he attaches a supreme and quite fatal importance to all 10,000 of them. He begins to be fussy on waking up, and he stops being fussy when he goes to sleep, lie keeps a thermometer in his bath because he is convinced that there is a “right” temperature for the bath water, and that any other temperature would impair his efficiency. And he will probably have rigid ideas about the. precise sort of woven stuff he must wear next bls skin. lie may be almost any kind of character, and yet bo fussy. He may tie so tidy that ho cannot exist in a room, either iu bis own house or j|i anybody else’s, uni 11 he has made all the pictures exactly horizontal. lie may be so untidy that if his wife privily tidies his desk he is put off work for the rest of the day. lie may be so fond of open air that he can only sleep with hits head out of a window, or so afraid of open air that a draft deranges all his activities for a fortnight. He may be so regular that he kisses his wife by the clock, or so irregular that he is never conscious of appetite until a meal ha,s been going cold for half an hour. But whatever ho does and thinks, he does and thinks under the convic-

tion that if he did and thought otherwise the consequences would be dlsasI trous. Whereas the truth is that to change all his habits would result in great benefit to him. For he is the victim of hundreds of delusions, and especially of the grand delusion that the world is ready to come to an end on the most trifling provocation. You naturally scorn him. Yet you may unconsciously be on the way to becoming a complete fusser yourself. Progressively Fussy. THE real instinct to fuss can always be distinguished by this —it is progressive. Pride, if not conceit, is always pushing the fusser from one abnormality to the next. Thus a man discloses a dislike to black clothes. His aunt dies at a great distance and leaves him some money. His wife asks him: “Shall you wear black?” He answers with somewhat pained dignity: "Darling, you know I never wear black." He is now known io himself and to bis wife as the man who will not wear black. Then his father dies; the objector to black will have to attend the funeral. After a little conversation with him the wife says to friends: “You know Edward objects to black. He does really. He never wears it, and I’m afraid he won’t wear it even for his father’s funeral.” Henceforth Edward is known not : only to himself and his wife but to the whole town as the man who won’t wear black. It Is a distinction. He is proud of it. Hi" wife is rather Impressed by the sturdiness of bis resolution. He has suffered a little for his objection to black. His reputation is made. Au anti-black eliii»'o iii'-o-t-i itself into his religion. Success quI courages the instinct to fuss, ;<n,i .i he has grown fussy about something I cist?. And thus does he become u com- ' plete fusser. No Cure. T’HERE is no cure for the complete fusser, because he is unconscious of being fussy. What the world regards as fussiness he regards as wisdom essential to a reasonable existence. He sincerely looks down upon the rest of mankind. Spiritual pride puts him into the category of the hopeless case—along with the alcoholic, the kleptomaniac, and other specimens whom he would chillingly despise. Apparently the sole use of the complete fusser is to serve as a terrible warning to those who are on the way to becoming complete fussers themselves—a terrible warning to pull up. That: fussiness iu its earlier stages can be cured is certain. But the cure is very drastic in nature. There are lucid moments in the life of the as yet incomplete fusser when he suspects his malady, when he guiltily says to himself: "1 know I am peculiar, but—— Such a moment must be seized, and immediate action taken. The “but” must be choked. It is fatal. If the fusser is anti-black let him proceed to the shopping quartqr at once. Let him buy a ready-made black . suit, put it on in the store and have the other •tilt sent home. Let him then walk about the town in black. . . . He is saved! No less thorough procedure will save him. And similarly for all other varieties of fussiness.—S.M.H.