<SPAN name="XII"></SPAN>
<h2>XII</h2>
<h2>AN INTEREST IN LIFE</h2>
<br/>
<p>After a certain period of mental discipline,
of deliberate habit-forming and
habit-breaking, such as I have been
indicating, a man will begin to acquire
at any rate a superficial knowledge, a
nodding acquaintance, with that wonderful
and mysterious affair, his brain, and
he will also begin to perceive how important
a factor in daily life is the
control of his brain. He will assuredly
be surprised at the miracles which lie
between his collar and his hat, in that
queer box that he calls his head. For the
effects that can be accomplished by mere
steady, persistent thinking must appear
to be miracles to apprentices in the
practice of thought. When once a man,
having passed an unhappy day because
his clumsy, negligent brain forgot to
control his instincts at a critical moment,
has said to his brain: 'I will force you,
by concentrating you on that particular
point, to act efficiently the next time
similar circumstances arise,' and when
he has carried out his intention, and
when the awkward circumstances have
recurred, and his brain, disciplined, has
done its work, and so prevented unhappiness—then
that man will regard his brain
with a new eye. 'By Jove!' he will
say; 'I've stopped one source of unhappiness,
anyway. There was a time
when I should have made a fool of myself
in a little domestic crisis such as to-day's.
But I have gone safely through it. I am
all right. She is all right. The atmosphere
is not dangerous with undischarged
electricity! And all because my brain,
being in proper condition, watched firmly
over my instincts! I must keep this up.'
He will peer into that brain more and
more. He will see more and more of its
possibilities. He will have a new and a
supreme interest in <i>life</i>. A garden is a
fairly interesting thing. But the cultivation
of a garden is as dull as cold mutton
compared to the cultivation of a brain;
and wet weather won't interfere with
digging, planting, and pruning in the
box.</p>
<p>In due season the man whose hobby is
his brain will gradually settle down into
a daily routine, with which routine he
will start the day. The idea at the back
of the mind of the ordinary man (by the
ordinary man I mean the man whose
brain is not his hobby) is almost always
this: 'There are several things at present
hanging over me—worries, unfulfilled ambitions,
unrealised desires. As soon as
these things are definitely settled, then
I shall begin to live and enjoy myself.'
That is the ordinary man's usual idea.
He has it from his youth to his old age.
He is invariably waiting for something
to happen before he really begins to live.
I am sure that if you are an ordinary man
(of course, you aren't, I know) you will
admit that this is true of you; you exist
in the hope that one day things will be
sufficiently smoothed out for you to begin
to live. That is just where you differ
from the man whose brain is his hobby.
His daily routine consists in a meditation
in the following vein: 'This day is before
me. The circumstances of this day are
my environment; they are the material
out of which, by means of my brain, I
have to live and be happy and to refrain
from causing unhappiness in other people.
It is the business of my brain to make use
of <i>this</i> material. My brain is in its box
for that sole purpose. Not to-morrow!
Not next year! Not when I have made
my fortune! Not when my sick child is
out of danger! Not when my wife has
returned to her senses! Not when my
salary is raised! Not when I have passed
that examination! Not when my indigestion
is better! But <i>now!</i> To-day,
exactly as to-day is! The facts of to-day,
which in my unregeneracy I regarded
primarily as anxieties, nuisances, impediments,
I now regard as so much raw
material from which my brain has to
weave a tissue of life that is comely.'</p>
<p>And then he foresees the day as well
as he can. His experience teaches him
where he will have difficulty, and he
administers to his brain the lessons of
which it will have most need. He carefully
looks the machine over, and arranges
it specially for the sort of road which he
knows that it will have to traverse. And
especially he readjusts his point of view,
for his point of view is continually getting
wrong. He is continually seeing worries
where he ought to see material. He may
notice, for instance, a patch on the back
of his head, and he wonders whether it is
the result of age or of disease, or whether
it has always been there. And his wife
tells him he must call at the chemist's
and satisfy himself at once. Frightful
nuisance! Age! The endless trouble of
a capillary complaint! Calling at the
chemist's will make him late at the office!
etc. etc. But then his skilled, efficient
brain intervenes: 'What peculiarly interesting
material this mean and petty
circumstance yields for the practice of
philosophy and right living!' And again:
'Is <i>this</i> to ruffle you, O my soul? Will
it serve any end whatever that I should
buzz nervously round this circumstance
instead of attending to my usual business?'</p>
<p>I give this as an example of the necessity
of adjusting the point of view, and of the
manner in which a brain habituated by
suitable concentration to correct thinking
will come to the rescue in unexpected
contingencies. Naturally it will work with
greater certainty in the manipulation of
difficulties that are expected, that can
be 'seen coming '; and preparation for
the expected is, fortunately, preparation
for the unexpected. The man who commences
his day by a steady contemplation
of the dangers which the next sixteen
hours are likely to furnish, and by arming
himself specially against those dangers,
has thereby armed himself, though to a
less extent, against dangers which he did
not dream of. But the routine must be
fairly elastic. It may be necessary to
commence several days in succession—for
a week or for months, even—with
disciplining the brain in one particular
detail, to the temporary neglect of other
matters. It is astonishing how you can
weed every inch of a garden path and
keep it in the most meticulous order, and
then one morning find in the very middle
of it a lusty, full-grown plant whose roots
are positively mortised in granite! All
gardeners are familiar with such discoveries.</p>
<p>But a similar discovery, though it entails
hard labour on him, will not disgust the
man whose hobby is his brain. For the
discovery in itself is part of the material
out of which he has to live. If a man is
to turn everything whatsoever into his
own calm, dignity, and happiness, he
must make this use even of his own
failures. He must look at them as phenomena
of the brain in that box, and cheerfully
set about taking measures to prevent
their repetition. All that happens to
him, success or check, will but serve to
increase his interest in the contents of
that box. I seem to hear you saying:
'And a fine egotist he'll be!' Well,
he'll be the right sort of egotist. The
average man is not half enough of an
egotist. If egotism means a terrific
interest in one's self, egotism is absolutely
essential to efficient living. There is no
getting away from that. But if egotism
means selfishness, the serious student of
the craft of daily living will not be an
egotist for more than about a year. In a
year he will have proved the ineptitude
of egotism.</p>
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