PLAIN EVERY DAY COMMON SENSE
Plain common sense!
When we come to sift everything down which will enable us to live
wholesome, steady, every day, interesting lives, plain common sense
seems to be the first and the simplest need. In the working out of any
problem, whether it be in science or in art or in plain everyday living,
we are told to go from the circumference to the center, from the known
to the unknown, from simplest facts to those which would otherwise seem
complex. And whether the life we are living is quiet and commonplace, or
whether it is full of change and adventure, to be of the greatest and
most permanent use, a life must have as its habitual background plain
every day common sense.
When we stop and
think a while, the lack of this important quality is quite glaring, and
every one who has his attention called to it and recognizes that lack
enough to be interested to supply it in his own life, is doing more good
toward bringing plain common sense into the world at large than we can
well appreciate. For instance, it is only a fact of plain common sense
that we should keep rested, and yet how many of us do? How many readers
of this article will smile or sneer, or be irritated when they read the
above, and say, "It is all very well to talk of keeping rested. How is
it possible with all I have to do ? or with all the care I have? or with
all I have to worry me ?"
Now that is just the
point, the answer to that question, "How is it possible ?" So very few
of us know how to do it, and if "how to keep rested though busy" were
regularly taught in all schools in this country, so far from making the
children self conscious and over careful of themselves, it would lay up
in their brains ideas of plain common sense which would be stocked
safely there for use when, as their lives grew more maturely busy, they
would find the right habits formed, enabling them to keep busy and at
the same time to keep quiet and rested. What a wonderful difference it
would eventually make in the wholesomeness of the manners and customs of
this entire nation. And that difference would come from giving the
children now a half hour's instruction in the plain common sense of
keeping well rested, and in seeing that such instruction was entirely
and only practical.
It has often seemed
to me that the tendency of education in the present day is more toward
giving information than it is in preparing the mind to receive and use
interesting and useful information of all kinds: that is, in helping the
mind to attract what it needs; to absorb what it attracts, and digest
what it absorbs as thoroughly as any good healthy stomach ever digested
the food it needed to supply the body with strength. The root of such
cultivation, it seems to me, is in teaching the practical use and
application of all that is studied. To be sure, there is much more of
that than there was fifty years ago, but you have only to put to the
test the minds of young graduates to see how much more of such work is
needed, and how much more intelligent the training of the young mind may
be, even now.
Take, for instance,
the subject of ethics. How many boys and girls go home and are more
useful in their families, more thoughtful and considerate for all about
them, for their study of ethics in school ? And yet the study of ethics
has no other use than this. If the mind absorbed and digested the true
principles of ethics, so that the heart felt moved to use them, it
might, it probably would make a great change in the lives of the boys
and girls who studied it, a change that would surprise and delight their
parents and friends.
If the science of
keeping rested were given in schools in the way that, in most cases, the
science of ethics seems to be given now, the idea of rest would lie in
an indigestible lump on the minds of the students, and instead of being
absorbed, digested and carried out in their daily lives, would be
evaporated little by little into the air, or vomited off the mind in
various jokes about it, and other expressions that would prove the
children knew nothing of what they were being taught.
But again, I am glad
to repeat if instruction, practical instruction, were given every day
in the schools on how to form the habit of keeping rested, it would have
a wonderful effect upon the whole country, not to mention where in many
individual cases it would actually prevent the breaking out of
hereditary disease.
Nature always tends
toward health; so strongly, so habitually does nature tend toward health
that it seems at times as if the working of natural laws pushed some
people into health in spite of chronic antagonism they seem to have
against health, one might even say in spite of the wilful refusal of
health.
When one's body is
kept rested, nature is constantly throwing off germs of disease,
constantly working, and working most actively, to protect the body from
anything that would interfere with its perfect health. When one's body
is not rested, nature works just as hard, but the tired body through its
various forms of tension that impede the circulation, prevent the
healthy absorption of food and oxygen, and clog the way so that
impurities cannot be carried off, interferes with nature's work and thus
makes it impossible for her to keep the machine well oiled. When we are
tired, the very fact of being tired makes us more tired, unless we rest
properly.
A great deal - it
seems to me more than one half - of the fatigue in the world comes from
the need of an intelligent understanding of how to keep rested. The more
that lack of intelligence is allowed to grow, the worse it is going to
be for the health of the nation. We have less of that plain common sense
than our grandfathers and grandmothers. They had less than their
fathers and mothers. We need more than our ancestors, because life is
more complicated now, than it was then. We can get more if we will,
because there is more real understanding of the science of hygiene than
our fathers and mothers had before us. Our need now is to use
practically the information which a few individuals are able to give us,
and especially to teach such practical use to our children.
Let us find out how we would actually go to work to keep rested, and take the information of plain common sense and use it.
To keep rested we must not overwork our body inside or outside. We must keep it in an equilibrium of action and rest.
We overwork our body
inside when we eat the wrong food and when we eat too much or not
enough of the right food, for then the stomach has more than its share
of work to do, and as the effort to do it well robs the brain and the
whole nervous system, so, of course, the rest of the body has not its
rightful supply of energy and the natural result is great fatigue.
We overwork our body
inside when we do not give it its due amount of fresh air. The blood
needs the oxygen to supply itself and the nerves and muscles with power
to do their work. When the oxygen is not supplied to the blood, the
machinery of the body has to work with so much less power than really
belongs to it, that there is great strain in the effort to do its work
properly, and the effect is, of course, fatigue.
In either of the
above cases, both with an overworked stomach and an overworked heart and
lungs, the complaint is very apt to be, "Why am I so tired when I have
done nothing to get tired?" The answer is, "No, you have done nothing
outside with your muscles, but the heart and lungs and the stomach are
delicate and exquisite instruments. You have overworked them all, and
such overwork is the more fatiguing in proportion to what is done than
any other form, except overwork of the brain." And the overtired stomach
and heart and lungs tire the brain, of course.
Of the work that is
given to the brain itself to overtire it we must speak later. So much
now for that which prevents the body from keeping rested inside, in the
finer working of its machinery.
It is easy to find
out what and how to eat. A very little careful thought will show us
that. It is only the plain common sense of eating we need. It is easy to
see that we must not eat on a tired stomach, and if we have to do so,
we must eat much less than we ordinarily would, and eat it more slowly.
So much good advice is already given about what and how to eat, I need
say nothing here, and even without that advice, which in itself is so
truly valuable, most of us could have plain common sense about our own
food if we would use our minds intelligently about it, and eat only what
we know to be nourishing to us. That can be done without fussing.
Fussing about food contracts the stomach, and prevents free digestion
almost as much as eating indigestible food.
Then again, if we
deny ourselves that which we want and know is bad for us, and eat only
that which we know to be nourishing, it increases the delicacy of our
relish. We do not lose relish by refusing to eat too much candy. We gain
it. Human pigs lose their most delicate relish entirely, and they lose
much, very much more, than that.
Unfortunately with
most people, there is not the relish for fresh air that there is for
food. Very few people want fresh air selfishly; the selfish tendency of
most people is to cut it off for fear of taking cold. And yet the
difference felt in health, in keeping rested, in ease of mind, is as
great between no fresh air and plenty of fresh air as it is between the
wrong kind of food and enough (and not too much) of the right kind of
food.
Why does not the
comfort of the body appeal to us as strongly through the supply of air
given to the lungs as through that of food given to the stomach? The
right supply of fresh air has such wonderful power to keep us rested!
Practical teaching
to the children here would, among other things, give them training which
would open their lungs and enable them to take in with every breath the
full amount of oxygen needed toward keeping them rested. There are so
many cells in the lungs of most people, made to receive oxygen, which
never receive one bit of the food they are hungry for.
There is much more,
of course, very much more, to say about the working of the machinery of
the inside of the body and about the plain common sense needed to keep
it well and rested, but I have said enough for now to start a thoughtful
mind to work.
Now for keeping the
body well rested from the outside. It is all so well arranged for us,
the night given us to sleep in, a good long day of work and a long night
of rest; so the time for rest and the time for work are equalized and
it is so happily arranged that out of the twenty-four hours in the day,
when we are well, we need only eight hours' sleep. So well does nature
work and so truly that she can make up for us in eight hours' sleep what
fuel we lose in sixteen hours of activity.
Only one-third of
the time do we need to sleep, and we have the other two-thirds for work
and play. This regular sleep is a strong force in our aim to keep
rested. Therefore, the plain common sense of that is to find out how to
go to sleep naturally, how to get all the rest out of sleep that nature
would give us, and so to wake refreshed and ready for the day.
To go to sleep
naturally we must learn how to drop all the tension of the day and
literally drop to sleep like a baby. Let go into sleep, there is a host
of meaning in that expression. When we do that, nature can revive and
refresh and renew us. Renew our vitality, bring us so much more brain
power for the day, all that we need for our work and our play; or almost
all, for there are many little rests during the day, little openings
for rest that we need to take, and that we can teach ourselves to take
as a matter of course. We can sit restfully at each one of our three
meals. Eat restfully and quietly, and so make each meal not only a means
of getting nourishment, but of getting rest as well. There is all the
difference of illness and health in taking a meal with strain and a
sense of rush and pressure of work, and in taking it as if to eat that
one meal were the only thing we had to do in the day. Better to eat a
little nourishing food and eat it quietly and at leisure than a large
meal of the same food with a sense of rush. This is a very important
factor in keeping rested.
Then there are the
many expected and unexpected times in the day when we can take rest and
so keep rested. If we have to wait we can sit quietly. Whatever we are
doing we can make use of the between times to rest. Each man can find
his own "between times." If we make real use of them, intelligent use,
they not only help us to keep rested, they help us to do our work
better, if we will but watch for them and use them.
Now the body is only
a servant, and in all I have written above, I have only written of the
servant. How can a servant keep well and rested if the master drives him
to such an extent that he is brought into a state, not where he won't
go, but where he can't go, and must therefore drop ? It is the
intelligent master, who is a true disciple of plain common sense, who
will train his servant, the body, in the way of resting, eating and
breathing, in order to fit it for the maximum of work at the minimum of
energy. But if you obey every external law for the health and strength
of the body, and obey it implicitly, and to the letter, with all
possible intelligence, you cannot keep it healthy if the mind that owns
the body is pulling it and twisting it, and twanging on its delicate
machinery with a flood of resentment and resistance; and the spirit
behind the mind is eager, wretched, and unhappy, because it does not get
its own way, or elated with an inflamed egoism because it is getting
its own way.
All plain common
sense in the way of health for the body falls dead unless followed up
closely with plain common sense for the health of the mind; and then
again, although when there is "a healthy mind in a healthy body," the
health appears far more permanent than when a mind full of personal
resistance tries to keep its body healthy, even that happy combination
cannot be really permanent unless there is found back of it a healthy
spirit.
But of the plain common sense of the spirit there is more to be said at another time.
With regard to the
mind, let us look and see not only that it is not sensible to allow it
to remain full of resistance, but is it not positively stupid ?
What an important
factor it should be in the education of children to teach them the plain
common sense needed to keep the mind healthy to teach them the
uselessness of a mental resistance, and the wholesomeness of a clean
mind.
If a child worries
about his lessons, he is resisting the possibility of failing in his
class; let him learn that the worry interferes with his getting his
lesson. Teach him how to drop the worry, and he will find not only that
he gets the lesson in less time, but his mind is clearer to remember it.
By following the
same laws, children could be taught that a feeling of rush and hurry
only impedes their progress. The rushed feeling sometimes comes from a
nervous unquiet which is inherited, and should be trained out of the
child.
But alas! alas! how
can a mother or a father train a child to live common sensibly without
useless resistance when neither the mother nor the father can do that
same themselves. It is not too late for any mother or father to learn,
and if each will have the humility to confess to the child that they are
learning and help the child to learn with them, no child would or could
take advantage of that and as the children are trained rightly, what a
start they can give their own children when they grow up and what a gain
there might be from one generation to another ! Will it ever come ?
Surely we hope so.
A SUMMING UP
Give up resentment, give up unhealthy resistance.
If circumstances, or
persons, arouse either resentment or resistance in us, let us ignore
the circumstances or persons until we have quieted ourselves. Freedom
does not come from merely yielding out of resentment or unhealthy
resistance, it comes also from the strong and steady focus on such
yielding. Concentration and relaxation are just as necessary one to
another to give stability to the nerves of a man as the centrifugal and
centripetal forces are necessary to give stability to the Earth.
As the habit of
healthy concentration and relaxation grows within us, our perception
clears so that we see what is right to do, and are given the power to do
it. As our freedom from bondage to our fellowmen becomes established,
our relation to our fellowmen grows happier, more penetrating and more
full of life, and later we come to understand that at root it is
ourselves, our own resentment and resistance to which we have been in
bondage, circumstances or other people have had really nothing to do
with it. When we have made that discovery, and are steadily acting upon
it, we are free indeed, and with this new liberty there grows a clear
sense and conviction of a wise, loving Power which, while leaving us our
own free will, is always tenderly guiding us.
No one ever really
believed anything without experiencing it. We may think we believe all
sorts of beautiful truths, but how can any truth be really ours unless
we have proved it by living ? We do not fully believe it until it runs
in our blood that is - we must see a truth with our minds, love it with
our hearts and live it over and over again in our lives before it is
ours.
If the reader will
think over this little book, he will see that every chapter has healthy
yielding at the root of it. It is a constant repetition of the same
principle applied to the commonplace circumstances of life, and if the
reader will take this principle into his mind, and work practically to
live it in his life, he will find the love for it growing in his heart,
and with it a living conviction that when truly applied, it always
works.
Some one once
described the difference between good breeding and bad breeding as that
between a man who works as a matter of course to conquer his limitations
and a man to whom his limitations are inevitable.
There is spiritual
good breeding and natural good breeding. The first comes from the
achievement of personal character the second is born with us to use or
misuse as we prefer.
It is a happy thing
to realize that our freedom from bondage to circumstances, and our
loving, intelligent freedom from other people, is the true spiritual
good breeding which gives vitality to every action of our lives, and
brings us into more real and closer touch with our fellow men. Courtesy
is alive when it has genuine love of all human nature at the root of it,
it is dead when it is merely a matter of good form.
In so far as I know,
the habit of such freedom and good breeding cannot be steadily
sustained without an absolute, conscious dependence upon the Lord God
Almighty.
Annie Payson Call (1853–1940) was a Waltham author.
She wrote several books and published articles in "Ladies' Home Journal".
Many articles are reprinted in her book "Nerves and Common Sense".
The common theme of her work is mental health.
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