Books: Nerves and Common Sense
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Annie Payson Call >> Nerves and Common Sense
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But to return to those drawn, strained lines we see on the people
about us. They do not come from hard work or deep thought. They come
from unnecessary contractions about the work. If we use our wills
consistently and steadily to drop such contractions, the result is a
more quiet and restful way of living, and so quieter and more
attractive faces.
This unquietness comes especially in the eyes. It is a rare thing to
see a really quiet eye; and very pleasant and beautiful it is when
we do see it. And the more we see and observe the unquiet eyes and
the unquiet faces the better worth while it seems to work to have
ours more quiet, but not to put on a mask, or be in any other way a
hypocrite.
The exercise described in a previous chapter will help to bring a
quiet face. We must drop our heads with a sense of letting every
strain go out of our faces, and then let our heads carry our bodies
down as far as possible, dropping strain all the time, and while
rising slowly we must take the same care to drop all strain.
In taking the long breath, we must inhale without effort, and exhale
so easily that it seems as if the breath went out of itself, like
the balloons that children blow up and then watch them shrink as the
air leaves them.
Five minutes a day is very little time to spend to get a quiet face,
but just that five minutes--if followed consistently--will make us
so much more sensitive to the unquiet that we will sooner or later
turn away from it as by a natural instinct.
CHAPTER XIX
_About Voices_
I KNEW an old German--a wonderful teacher of the speaking voice--who
said "the ancients believed that the soul of the man is
here"--pointing to the pit of his stomach. "I do not know," and he
shrugged his shoulders with expressive interest, "it may be and it
may not be--but I know the soul of the voice is here--and you
Americans--you squeeze the life out of the word in your throat and
it is born dead."
That old artist spoke the truth--we Americans--most of us--do
squeeze the life out of our words and they are born dead. We squeeze
the life out by the strain which runs all through us and reflects
itself especially in our voices. Our throats are tense and closed;
our stomachs are tense and strained; with many of us the word is
dead before it is born.
Watch people talking in a very noisy place; hear how they scream at
the top of their lungs to get above the noise. Think of the amount
of nervous force they use in their efforts to be heard.
Now really when we are in the midst of a great noise and want to be
heard, what we have to do is to pitch our voices on a different key
from the noise about us. We can be heard as well, and better, if we
pitch our voices on a lower key than if we pitch them on a higher
key; and to pitch your voice on a low key requires very much less
effort than to strain to a high one.
I can imagine talking with some one for half an hour in a noisy
factory--for instance--and being more rested at the end of the half
hour than at the beginning. Because to pitch your voice low you must
drop some superfluous tension and dropping superfluous tension is
always restful.
I beg any or all of my readers to try this experiment the next time
they have to talk with a friend in a noisy street. At first the
habit of screaming above the noise of the wheels is strong on us and
it seems impossible that we should be heard if we speak below it. It
is difficult to pitch our voices low and keep them there. But if we
persist until we have formed a new habit, the change is delightful.
There is one other difficulty in the way; whoever is listening to us
may be in the habit of hearing a voice at high tension and so find
it difficult at first to adjust his ear to the lower voice and will
in consequence insist that the lower tone cannot be heard as easily.
It seems curious that our ears can be so much engaged in expecting
screaming that they cannot without a positive effort of the mind
readjust in order to listen to a lower tone. But it is so. And,
therefore, we must remember that to be thoroughly successful in
speaking intelligently below the noise we must beg our listeners to
change the habit of their ears as we ourselves must change the pitch
of our voices.
The result both to speaker and listener is worth the effort ten
times over.
As we habitually lower the pitch of our voices our words cease
gradually to be "born dead." With a low-pitched voice everything
pertaining to the voice is more open and flexible and can react more
immediately to whatever may be in our minds to express.
Moreover, the voice itself may react back again upon our
dispositions. If a woman gets excited in an argument, especially if
she loses her temper, her voice will be raised higher and higher
until it reaches almost a shriek. And to hear two women "argue"
sometimes it may be truly said that we are listening to a
"caterwauling." That is the only word that will describe it.
But if one of these women is sensitive enough to know she is
beginning to strain in her argument and will lower her voice and
persist in keeping it lowered the effect upon herself and the other
woman will put the "caterwauling" out of the question.
"Caterwauling" is an ugly word. It describes an ugly sound. If you
have ever found yourself in the past aiding and abetting such an
ugly sound in argument with another--say to yourself "caterwauling,"
"caterwauling," "I have been 'caterwauling' with Jane Smith, or
Maria Jones," or whoever it may be, and that will bring out in such
clear relief the ugliness of the word and the sound that you will
turn earnestly toward a more quiet way of speaking.
The next time you start on the strain of an argument and your voice
begins to go up, up, up--something will whisper in your ear
"caterwauling" and you will at once, in self-defense, lower your
voice or stop speaking altogether.
It is good to call ugly things by their ugliest names. It helps us
to see them in their true light and makes us more earnest in our
efforts to get away from them altogether.
I was once a guest at a large reception and the noise of talking
seemed to be a roar, when suddenly an elderly man got up on a chair
and called "silence," and having obtained silence he said, "it has
been suggested that every one in this room should speak in a lower
tone of voice."
The response was immediate. Every one went on talking with the same
interest only in a lower tone of voice with a result that was both
delightful and soothing.
I say every one--there were perhaps half a dozen whom I observed who
looked and I have no doubt said "how impudent." So it was "impudent"
if you chose to take it so--but most of the people did not choose to
take it so and so brought a more quiet atmosphere and a happy change
of tone.
Theophile Gautier said that the voice was nearer the soul
than any other expressive part of us. It is certainly a very
striking indicator of the state of the soul. If we accustom
ourselves to listen to the voices of those about us we detect more
and more clearly various qualities of the man or the woman in the
voice, and if we grow sensitive to the strain in our own voices and
drop it at once when it is perceived, we feel a proportionate gain.
I knew of a blind doctor who habitually told character by the tone
of the voice, and men and women often went to him to have their
characters described as one would go to a palmist.
Once a woman spoke to him earnestly for that purpose and he replied,
"Madam, your voice has been so much cultivated that there is nothing
of you in it--I cannot tell your real character at all." The only
way to cultivate a voice is to open it to its best
possibilities--not to teach its owner to pose or to imitate a
beautiful tone until it has acquired the beautiful tone habit. Such
tones are always artificial and the unreality in them can be easily
detected by a quick ear.
Most great singers are arrant hypocrites. There is nothing of
themselves in their tone. The trouble is to have a really beautiful
voice one must have a really beautiful soul behind it.
If you drop the tension of your voice in an argument for the sake of
getting a clearer mind and meeting your opponent without resistance,
your voice helps your mind and your mind helps your voice.
They act and react upon one another with mutual benefit. If you
lower your voice in general for the sake of being more quiet, and so
more agreeable and useful to those about you, then again the mental
or moral effort and the physical effort help one another.
It adds greatly to a woman's attraction and to her use to have a
low, quiet voice--and if any reader is persisting in the effort to
get five minutes absolute quiet in every day let her finish the
exercise by saying something in a quiet, restful tone of voice.
It will make her more sensitive to her unrestful tones outside, and
so help her to improve them.
CHAPTER XX
_About Frights_
HERE are two true stories and a remarkable contrast. A nerve
specialist was called to see a young girl who had had nervous
prostration for two years. The physician was told before seeing the
patient that the illness had started through fright occasioned by
the patient's waking and discovering a burglar in her room.
Almost the moment the doctor entered the sick room, he was accosted
with: "Doctor, do you know what made me ill? It was frightful." Then
followed a minute description of her sudden awakening and seeing the
man at her bureau drawers.
This story had been lived over and over by the young girl and her
friends for two years, until the strain in her brain caused by the
repetition of the impression of fright was so intense that no skill
nor tact seemed able to remove it. She simply would not let it go,
and she never got really well.
Now, see the contrast. Another young woman had a similar burglar
experience, and for several nights after she woke with a start at
the same hour. For the first two or three nights she lay and
shivered until she shivered herself to sleep.
Then she noticed how tightened up she was in every muscle when she
woke, and she bethought herself that she would put her mind on
relaxing her muscles and getting rid of the tension in her nerves.
She did this persistently, so that when she woke with the burglar
fright it was at once a reminder to relax.
After a little she got the impression that she woke in order to
relax and it was only a very little while before she succeeded so
well that she did not wake until it was time to get up in the
morning.
The burglar impression not only left her entirely, but left her with
the habit of dropping all contractions before she went to sleep, and
her nerves are stronger and more normal in consequence.
The two girls had each a very sensitive, nervous temperament, and
the contrast in their behavior was simply a matter of intelligence.
This same nerve specialist received a patient once who was
positively blatant in her complaint of a nervous shock. "Doctor, I
have had a horrible nervous shock. It was horrible. I do not see how
I can ever get over it."
Then she told it and brought the horrors out in weird, over-vivid
colors. It was horrible, but she was increasing the horrors by the
way in which she dwelt on it.
Finally, when she paused long enough to give the doctor an
opportunity to speak, he said, very quietly: "Madam, will you kindly
say to me, as gently as you can, 'I have had a severe nervous
shock.'" She looked at him without a gleam of understanding and
repeated the words quietly: "I have had a severe nervous shock."
In spite of herself she felt the contrast in her own brain. The
habitual blatancy was slightly checked. The doctor then tried to
impress upon her the fact that she was constantly increasing the
strain of the shock by the way she spoke of it and the way she
thought of it, and that she was really keeping herself ill.
Gradually, as she learned to relax the nervous tension caused by the
shock, a true intelligence about it all dawned upon her; the
over-vivid colors faded, and she got well. She was surprised herself
at the rapidity with which she got well, but she seemed to
understand the process and to be moderately grateful for it.
If she had had a more sensitive temperament she would have
appreciated it all the more keenly; but if she had had a more
sensitive temperament she would not have been blatant about her
shock.
CHAPTER XXI
_Contrariness_
I KNOW a woman who says that if she wants to get her father's
consent to anything, she not only appears not to care whether he
consents or not, but pretends that her wishes are exactly opposite
to what they really are. She says it never fails; the decision has
always been made in opposition to her expressed desires, and
according to her real wishes. In other words, she has learned how to
manage her father.
This example is not unique. Many of us see friends managing other
friends in that same way. The only thing which can interfere with
such astute management is the difficulty that a man may have in
concealing his own will in order to accomplish what he desires.
Wilfulness is such an impulsive quantity that it will rush ahead in
spite of us and spoil everything when we feel that there is danger
of our not getting our own way. Or, if we have succeeded in getting
our own way by what might be called the "contrary method," we may be
led into an expression of satisfaction which will throw light on the
falseness of our previous attitude and destroy the confidence of the
friend whom we were tactfully influencing.
To work the "contrary method" to perfection requires a careful
control up to the finish and beyond it. In order never to be found
out, we have to be so consistent in our behavior that we gradually
get trained into nothing but a common every-day hypocrite, and the
process which goes on behind hypocrisy must necessarily be a process
of decay. Beside that, the keenest hypocrite that ever lived can
only deceive others up to a certain limit.
But what is one to do when a friend can only be reached by the
"contrary method"? What is one to do when if, for instance, you want
a friend to read a book, you know that the way to prevent his
reading it is to mention your desire? If you want a friend to see a
play and in a forgetful mood mention the fact that you feel sure the
play would delight him, you know as soon as the words are out of
your mouth you have put the chance of his seeing the play entirely
out of the question? What is one to do when something needs mending
in the house, and you know that to mention the need to the man of
the house would be to delay the repair just so much longer? How are
our contrary-minded friends to be met if we cannot pretend we do not
want what we do want in order to get their cooperation and consent?
No one could deliberately plan to be a hypocrite understanding what
a hypocrite really is. A hypocrite is a sham--a sham has nothing
solid to stand on. No one really respects a sham, and the most
intelligent, the most tactful hypocrite that ever lived is nothing
but a sham,--_false_ and a sham!
Beside, no one can manage another by the process of sham and
hypocrisy without sooner or later being found out, and when he is
found out, all his power is gone.
The trouble with the contrary-minded is they have an established
habit of resistance. Sometimes the habit is entirely inherited, and
has never been seen or acknowledged. Sometimes it has an inherited
foundation, with a cultivated superstructure.
Either way it is a problem for those who have to deal with
it,--until they understand. The "contrary method" does not solve the
problem; it is only a makeshift; it never does any real work, or
accomplishes any real end. It is not even lastingly intelligent.
The first necessity in dealing truly with these people is _not to be
afraid o f their resistances._ The second necessity, which is so
near the first that the two really belong side by side, is _never to
meet their resistances with resistances o f our own._
If we combat another man's resistance, it only increases his
tension. No matter how wrong he may be, and how right we are,
meeting resistance with resistance only breeds trouble. Two minds
can act and react upon one another in that way until they come to a
lock which not only makes lasting enemies of those who should have
been and could be always friends, but the contention locks up strain
in each man's brain which can never be removed without pain, and a
new awakening to the common sense of human intercourse.
If we want a friend to read a book, to go a journey, or to do
something which is more important for his own good than either, and
we know that to suggest our desire would be to rouse his resistance,
the only way is to catch him in the best mood we can, say what we
have to say, give our own preference, and at the same time feel and
express a willingness to be refused. Every man is a free agent, and
we have no right not to respect his freedom, even if he uses that
freedom to stand in his own light or in ours. If he is standing in
our light and refuses to move, we can move out of his shadow, even
though we may have to give up our most cherished desire in order to
do so.
If he is standing in his own light, and refuses to move, we can
suggest or advise and do whatever in us lies to make the common
sense of our opinion clear; but if he still persists in standing in
his own light, it is his business, not ours.
It requires the cultivation of a strong will to put a request before
a friend which we know will be resisted, and to yield to that
resistance so that it meets no antagonism in us. But when it is
done, and done thoroughly, consistently, and intelligently, the
other man's resistance reacts back upon himself, and he finds
himself out as he never could in any other way. Having found himself
out, unless his mulishness is almost past sanity, he begins to
reject his habit of resistance of his own accord.
In dealing with the contrary minded, the "contrary method" works so
long as it is not discovered; and the danger of its being discovered
is always imminent. The upright, direct method is according to the
honorable laws of human intercourse, and brings always better
results in the end, even though there may be some immediate failures
in the process.
To adjust ourselves rightly to another nature and go with it to a
good end, along the lines of least resistance, is of course the best
means of a real acquaintance, but to allow ourselves to manage a
fellow-being is an indignity to the man and worse than an indignity
to the mind who is willing to do the managing.
Our humanity is in our freedom. Our freedom is in our humanity. When
one, man tries to manage another, he is putting that other in the
attitude of a beast. The man who is allowing himself to be managed
is classing himself with the beasts.
Although this is a fact so evident on the base of it that it needs
neither explanation nor enlargement, there is hardly a day passes
that some one does not say to some one, "You cannot manage me in
that way," and the answer should be, "Why should you want to be
managed in any way; and why should I want to insult you by trying to
manage you at all?"
The girl and her father might have been intelligent friends by this
time, if the practice of the "contrary method" had not tainted the
girl with habitual hypocrisy, and cultivated in the father the
warped mind which results from the habit of resistance, and blind
weakness which comes from the false idea that he is always having
his own way.
If we want an open brain and a good, freely working nervous system,
we must respect our own freedom and the freedom of other
people,--for only as individuals stand alone can they really
influence one another to any good end.
It is curious to see how the men of habitual resistance pride
themselves on being in bondage to no one, not knowing that the fear
of such bondage is what makes them resist, and the fear of being
influenced by another is one of the most painful forms of bondage in
which a man can be.
The men who are slaves to this fear do not stop even to consider the
question. They resist and refuse a request at once, for fear that
pausing for consideration would open them to the danger of appearing
to yield to the will of another.
When we are quite as willing to yield to another as to refuse him,
then we are free, and can give any question that is placed before us
intelligent consideration, and decide according to our best
judgment. No amount of willfulness can force a man to any action or
attitude of mind if he is willing to yield to the willful pressure
if it seems to him best.
The worse bondage of man to man is the bondage of fear.
CHAPTER XXII
_How to Sew Easily_
IT is a common saying that we should let our heads save our heels,
but few of us know the depth of it or the freedom and health that
can come from obedience to it.
For one thing we get into ruts. If a woman grows tired sewing she
takes it for granted that she must always be tired. Sometimes she
frets and complains, which only adds to her fatigue.
Sometimes she goes on living in a dogged state of overtiredness
until there comes a "last straw" which brings on some organic
disease, and still another "straw" which kills her altogether.
We, none of us, seem to realize that our heads can save not only our
heels, but our hearts, and our lungs, our spines and our
brains--indeed our whole nervous systems.
Men and women sometimes seem to prefer to go on working--chronically
tired--getting no joy from life whatever, rather than to take the
trouble to think enough to gain the habit of working restfully.
Sometimes, to be sure, they are so tired that the little extra
exertion of the brain required to learn to get rid of the fatigue
seems too much for them.
It seems easier to work in a rut of strain and discomfort than to
make the effort to get out of the rut--even though they know that by
doing so they will not only be better themselves, but will do their
work better.
Now really the action of the brain which is needed to help one to
work restfully is quite distinct from the action which does the
work, and a little effort of the brain in a new direction rests and
refreshes the part of the brain which is drudging along day after
day, and not only that, but when one has gained the habit of working
more easily life is happier and more worth while. If once we could
become convinced of that fact it would be a simple matter for the
head to learn to save the heels and for the whole body to be more
vigorous in consequence.
Take sewing, for instance: If a woman must sew all day long without
cessation and she can appreciate that ten or fifteen minutes taken
out of the day once in the morning and once in the afternoon is
going to save fatigue and help her to do her sewing better, doesn't
it seem simply a lack of common sense if she is not willing to take
that half hour and use it for its right purpose? Or, if she is
employed with others, is it not a lack of common sense combined with
cruelty in her employer if he will not permit the use of fifteen
minutes twice a day to help his employees to do their work better
and to keep more healthy in the process of working?
It seems to me that all most of us need is to have our attention
drawn to the facts in such cases as this and then we shall be
willing and anxious to correct the mistakes.
First, we do not know, and, secondly, we do not think,
intelligently. It is within our reach to do both.
Let me put the facts about healthy sewing in numerical order:--
First--A woman should never sew nor be allowed to sew in bad air.
The more or less cramped attitude of the chest in sewing makes it
especially necessary that the lungs should be well supplied with
oxygen, else the blood will lose vitality, the appetite will go and
the nerves will be straining to bring the muscles up to work which
they could do quite easily if they were receiving the right amount
of nourishment from air and food.
Second--When our work gives our muscles a tendency steadily in one
direction we must aim to counteract that tendency by using exercises
with a will to pull them in the opposite way.
If a man writes constantly, to stop writing half a dozen times a day
and stretch the fingers of his hand wide apart and let them relax
back slowly will help him so that he need not be afraid of writer's
paralysis.
Now a woman's tendency in sewing is to have her chest contracted and
settled down on her stomach, and her head bent forward. Let her stop
even twice a day, lift her chest off her stomach, see that the
lifting of her chest takes her shoulders back, let her head gently
fall back, take a long quiet breath in that attitude, then bring the
head up slowly, take some long quiet breaths like gentle sighs,
gradually let the lungs settle back into their habitual state of
breathing, and then try the exercise again.
If this exercise is repeated three times in succession with quiet
care, its effect will be very evident in the refreshment felt when a
woman begins sewing again.
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