MENTAL SECOND WIND

Waipa Post, Volume 51, Issue 3694, 6 December 1935, Page 3

MENTAL SECOND WIND

all mind distraction, mind play, mind variety of delight. Many of us use our mental powers very badly, or, to put it otherwise, we are tyrants to ourselves. Our employees are protected by law against more than the allotted hours of labour, but the employers have no defence against outrageous sweating of themselves. There is a penalty imposed by nature, and it is heavy. Wisdom crieth in the warehouses, offices, and even from the housetops, bidding us relax and be scientific in our relaxation. It allures us with promises of,more power, of a second wind for the mind, a third wind,- and so on to the uttermost limit of what forces are in our constitution. As Macbeth’s physician said, “ Therein the patient must ministep to himself.”

ABNORMAL RESPONSIBILITIES. When we speak of second wind we generally mean the new power of respiration succeeding the first breathlessness. The significance of the phrase widens in more than one direction. After a nervous breakdown which compelled us to seek more or less prolonged rest we congratulate ourselves on the . renewal of vigour and speak of it as getting our second wind. Continuous toil, bodily or mental, or both, had brought us to a standstill and given us a sense of staleness. The brain struck work. The chariot wheels, after driving heavily, came to a dead stop. W'e lost our punch, and with it the zest lor life. We have been provided with instalments of leisure in the shape of Sundays and annual holidays, which are understood to ensure recuperation. There is also the inestimable boon of sleep, which Sancho Panza labelled as an “ invention,” and called down his blessings on the inventor for furnishing what covered a man all over like a mantle and made the beggar equal to the king.

Perpetual motion has not yet become one of man’s triumphs, but some business men have come very near to making perilous experiments to secure it for themselves, and multitudes of other humans forget that they are guilty of the same folly. Mr Morley Danow, in a new book on “ Organisation for Business,” warns us that if we are to avoid collapse we must scientifically practise the art of relaxation. As rational beings we ought to understand that modern life lays on us quite abnormal responsibilities, cares, and worries. There is not one of us but can look round our circle of acquaintances and recall hard mental workers who passed away quite unexpectedly, or seriously crippled their powers by over-strenuous devotion to their affairs. The war created new problems, and imposed a terrific tax on our thinking powers. We need not despair, but we must continue to get our mental second wind.

The method recommended seems in itself ridiculously simple, but it requires a little concentration and perseverance. By way of illustration, this adviser says that “ if it is your custom to walk five hundred yards io your office from the station through the High Street, then one day walk through the side turning.” Viewed in its broadest aspect, we are to provide for continuous relaxation.

Mathematically we are to make use of permutations and combinations in respect of journeys and all other practices. Every man, we imagine, can hit upon l\is own. ways of doing so. He can sit with his back to the engine for a change, can avoid his favourite corner seat, let someone else drive his car for him, or, still happier thought, let his wife now and then travel into town with him in the morning or home with him in the evening. Mr Danow, however, makes much of daily relaxation in such form as a restful position every night and the turning of our minds “to thoughts of rest, of peace, of harmony, of country scenes.” This will be difficult at first, but after three weeks of it we shall find our second wind and solve our problems.

Occasional pauses in heavy intellectual work, leaning back in our chair, turning the mind to something quite remote from business, will give us the freshness and vim we need. We see statesmen getting off to their golf, or, for lack of it, compelled to retire for a time or absolutely resign. Even a prophet like Elijah breaks down, flees to the desert and the mountain, where he sees life and duty through other, larger eyes; returns to his work like a giant refreshed, and finishes his career in a whirlwind of glory. Tradition has it that the Apostle John was one day found playing with a tame partridge, and justified himself by the well-known analogy of the bow that is never bent.

Small wonder is it that so much attention is at the moment given to the subject of leisure, its need, and the proper equipment for it. There seems .to be a call for a professorship of leisure. A wit once asked why there was no chair in any university for teaching men the art of humour; but no such question need be raised about leisure except that of teaching us how to use it. The professor’s duty would make his post a professorship of things in general. What we see in times like ours is the stem need for every man to be his own professor, to find out or make the green pastures for hirpself. and see that he lies down in them daily.

There is a call to us to forget that we are merchants and to become men. The general love of picnics is said to t:e an ancestral inheritance from remote ancestors who lived in woods and roamed at their own sweet will. A life scientifically divided into sections would make ample provision for alterations of all kinds, for less regimented days, and rational spells of sweet-do-nothing-ness. A shady glen, a nook in a garden, a restful chair, and a still more restful book will suffice. Our hearts may whisper to us of a village in the Winterless North with moonlight on the beach, or a camp in the heart of the TJrewei’a under the wide and starry sky, and the thought of such distant scenes may itself refresh us, because it is