QUIETNESS NEEDED FOR TRUE WORK ON “THINK” JOBS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 97, 20 September 1948, Page 6

QUIETNESS NEEDED FOR TRUE WORK ON “THINK” JOBS

(Contributed by the Ministers’ Association) “GfOd made time, but man made haste.” (Irish Proverb) Do we know how to rest? It is an art to be cultivated. Paul thought so, when he wrote to the unsettled members of the Church at Thessalonica: “Study to be quiet, and to do your own business.” He emphasised that quietness, is needed for true work. Why is a study part of the equipment of every manse, or parsonage, or vicarage—or whatever other name is given to the house where a minister lives? It is because we all realise, in a vague sort of way, that the thinker cannot work when tortured by disturbances. He seeks a quiet study. We are interested to learn that the best of the Waverley novels were all written in the dewy stillness of the early morning, and before the locust-bands that swarmed to Abbotsford put quietness out of the question of Sir Walter. Of course there is a certain type of man that is impervious to outward tumult. Mr Gladstone could read and write in Downing Street in total oblivion of the marching of the Horse Guards. But that did not mean that, he did not require quietude; it means that he could command an inward quiet, and that he was master of su'ch concentration as visits most of us only in rare moments. Sinclair Lewis, in his novel entitled “Babbitt,” gives a picture of the American business man, and of the life he leads: “As he approached the office he walked faster and faster, muttering ‘Guess better hustle.’ All about him the city'was hustling for hustling’s sake. Men in motors were hustling to pass one another in the hustling traffic. Men Vere hustling to 'catch trains, with another train a minute behind, and to leap from the trains to gallop across the pavement, to hurl themselves into buildings, into hustling express elevators. Men in dairy lunches were hustling to gulp down the food which cooks had hustled to fry. . . . Men were feverishly, getting rid of visitors in offices adorned with the sign ‘This Is ,My Busy Day.’ . . . Men who had broken down were hustling to catch trains, to hustle through the vacations which the hustling doctors had ordered.” Not yet are we as bad as that, but might take a lesson from the picture, and study to be quiet. But this modern craze for speed is only symptomatic of our attitude toward life generally. From the cradle to the grave life is becoming a senseless sort of sprint that is just idiotic. Mark our parental pride when wee Johnnie cuts his first tooth a month ahead of our neighbour’s bairn! or if he is first to pass the “Ta-ta” or “Daddy” tape! Later, his speed at learning at school is equally acclaimed. In adolescent days, by common consent, his success is measured by the speed with which he accumulates’ wealth or rank or power. Yet when we come to shake round the advantages to the average person of this high speed business, we are left with mighty little in the sieve; we may well wonder why all the hurry, or where does the real advantage come in? This speeding merely intensifies the process of accumulating hustle, and the necessity for hustle is one of the great delusions of the age. Hustling! Hustling for what? “Saving time” seems such a queer idea—as if'time were in limited supply! { On being asked how she managed to keep so young, an old Negress said, “When I works, I work hard; when I' sits, I sit loose; and when I worries, I go to sleep.”