The Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Wednesdays and Fridays. WEDNESDAY, MAY 21, 1941. THE GOOD USE OF WORRY

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 308, 21 May 1941, Page 4

The Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Wednesdays and Fridays. WEDNESDAY, MAY 21, 1941. THE GOOD USE OF WORRY

WORRY can be a disease, a nuisance, or a useful art. We can let it whirl us into an insane asylum, or we can let it wind us up to our most original discoveries and most ambitious work. What we need is encouragement in the technology of putting it to use. Suppose we are worrying with cause, about Ways and Means and there seems no way out. Around anc 1 * around our worry goes upon its beaten track, bringing the same topic back over and over again before the mind's eye. If we gaze at the worry aghast until we are confused and dizzy, it does us only harm. But if we observe all the outlandish accidents, calamities., and insidiour treachery inherent in the situation, we can shrewdly proceed against them. The detached, tranquil state of mind thinks only of reasonable contingencies. Worry reveals unreasonable things, and, in actual practice, things that happen are often completely unreasonable. Therefore, if we pay keen attention, to those illogical states of panicky prognostication we call worry, we are often goaded into making provision which head off outlandish accidents, in a way that makes onlookers, observing the hairbreadth outcome, call it our goo (J. luck. Worry serves the same purpose in the world of human relationships that pain serves in the physical realm; it is a warning, and a preventive. From bitter experience we know that unless somebody bestirs himself, things probably will not come out right of themselves. With the happiness of others dependent on our actions, it is the sheerest nonsense to tell us that we never ought to worry. There are moments when, all slang to the contrary notwithstanding, we really should.