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_ People say: "One can't help one's thoughts." But one can. The control
of the thinking machine is perfectly possible. And since nothing whatever
happens to us outside our own brain; since nothing hurts us or gives us
pleasure except within the brain, the supreme importance of being able
to control what goes on in that mysterious brain is patent. This idea is
one of the oldest platitudes, but it is a platitude who's profound truth and
urgency most people live and die without realising. People complain of
the lack of power to concentrate, not witting that they may acquire the
power, if they choose.
And without the power to concentrate--that is to say, without the power to
dictate to the brain its task and to ensure obedience--true life is impossible.
Mind control is the first element of a full existence.
Hence, it seems to me, the first business of the day should be to put the
mind through its paces. You look after your body, inside and out; you
run grave danger in hacking hairs off your skin; you employ a whole
army of individuals, from the milkman to the pig-killer, to enable you
to bribe your stomach into decent behaviour. Why not devote a little
attention to the far more delicate machinery of the mind, especially as
you will require no extraneous aid? It is for this portion of the art and
craft of living that I have reserved the time from the moment of quitting
your door to the moment of arriving at your office.
"What? I am to cultivate my mind in the street, on the platform, in the
train, and in the crowded street again?" Precisely. Nothing simpler!
No tools required! Not even a book. Nevertheless, the affair is not easy.
When you leave your house, concentrate your mind on a subject (no
matter what, to begin with). You will not have gone ten yards before
your mind has skipped away under your very eyes and is larking round
the corner with another subject.
Bring it back by the scruff of the neck. Ere you have reached the station
you will have brought it back about forty times. Do not despair. Continue.
Keep it up. You will succeed. You cannot by any chance fail if you
persevere. It is idle to pretend that your mind is incapable of concentration.
Do you not remember that morning when you received a disquieting letter
which demanded a very carefully-worded answer? How you kept your mind
steadily on the subject of the answer, without a second's intermission, until
you reached your office; whereupon you instantly sat down and wrote the
answer? That was a case in which *you* were roused by circumstances to
such a degree of vitality that you were able to dominate your mind like a tyrant.
You would have no trifling. You insisted that its work should be done, and its
work was done.
By the regular practice of concentration (as to which there is no secret--
save the secret of perseverance) you can tyrannise over your mind (which
is not the highest part of *you*) every hour of the day, and in no matter
what place. The exercise is a very convenient one. If you got into your
morning train with a pair of dumb-bells for your muscles or an encyclopaedia
in ten volumes for your learning, you would probably excite remark. But as
you walk in the street, or sit in the corner of the compartment behind a pipe,
or "strap-hang" on the Subterranean, who is to know that you are engaged in
the most important of daily acts? What asinine boor can laugh at you?
I do not care what you concentrate on, so long as you concentrate. It is the
mere disciplining of the thinking machine that counts. But still, you may as
well kill two birds with one stone, and concentrate on something useful. I
suggest--it is only a suggestion--a little chapter of Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus.
Do not, I beg, shy at their names. For myself, I know nothing more "actual,"
more bursting with plain common-sense, applicable to the daily life of plain
persons like you and me (who hate airs, pose, and nonsense) than Marcus
Aurelius or Epictetus. Read a chapter--and so short they are, the chapters!
--in the evening and concentrate on it the next morning. You will see.
Yes, my friend, it is useless for you to try to disguise the fact. I can hear
your brain like a telephone at my ear. You are saying to yourself: "This
fellow was doing pretty well up to his seventh chapter. He had begun to
interest me faintly. But what he says about thinking in trains, and concen-
tration, and so on, is not for me. It may be well enough for some folks,
but it isn't in my line."
It is for you, I passionately repeat; it is for you. Indeed, you are the very
man I am aiming at.
Throw away the suggestion, and you throw away the most precious
suggestion that was ever offered to you. It is not my suggestion. It is
the suggestion of the most sensible, practical, hard-headed men who
have walked the earth. I only give it you at second-hand. Try it. Get
your mind in hand. And see how the process cures half the evils of life
--especially worry, that miserable, avoidable, shameful disease--worry! _
Read next: CHAPTER VIII - THE REFLECTIVE MOOD, 69
Read previous: CHAPTER VI - REMEMBER HUMAN NATURE, 56
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