WORRY

Gisborne Times, Volume XIX, Issue 1547, 31 August 1905, Page 4

WORRY

Tho extraordinary sequence of suioides in England in the later part of Juno has led a writer in the “Daily Mail” to give us a short lecture on “ Worry,” the cause ho deolaros, of over 80 per cont. of suicideß at Homo. Imagination, he declares, is tho father of worry, and if worry and the inclination to worry were included among mental disorders, tho suggestion put forward not long ago by a physician, that 999 peoplo in every 1000 have the taint of insanity, might bo supported. And ho emphasises that it is not brooding on the inevitable or the important that “shortens life, that robs existence of half its sweetness,” so much as troubling over imaginary matters, or those which are of only trifling import. Indeed, the man who can bear the “ pin-pricks of life calmly is declared to be a rarer type than he who can bear great sorrow with fortitude, and yet succumbs to the petty trouble. The writer takes at random a number of reports of inquests to illustrate his meaning. There is the tradesman with a comfortable income who worried himself over a bill of £8 that was coming in; the skilled artisan who took bis life beoause he worried over the prospect of. being discharged, though nothing was said to him about it, and if he had been discharged he could easily have got another position ; and the clerk who worried because he was afraid that he would not be able to master a new system of checking accounts, and that he was not giving satisfaction o his employers, iln this last case the subject was a book-keeper of considerable experience, and the new system of accounts was simplicity itself. The chart of a worried man’s day is interesting. He rises at nine, and his spirits sink until at half-past nine (breakfast time curiously enough) he reaches the line of aoute irritation. From ten to noon he is in a state of minor irritation, and at one o’clock he is depressed. , Then there is a sharp rise, and from half-past one to halfpast two (no doubt the result of lunch) he is slightly above the line of equanimity. At four he is acutely irritable again, at five he recovers his equanimity, and at half-past six he ib down to the lowest point—-that of gloom. Then his spirits rise to depression at ! dinner time, and then sharply to equanimity at eight o’clock, and acute satisfaction at nine. This is the highest point reached during the day. There are two mental antidotes to worry—which is said to kill more people than any disease—fatalism and concentration. And all people who worry should hang in a conspicuous place the legend which .an American millionaire had carved over his mantelpiece, “I have had many troubles, most of which have never happened.’*