Passage　97 The Folly of Anxiety

Half the people on our streets look as though life was a sorry business.

It is hard to find a happy looking man or woman.

Worry is the cause of their woebegone appearance.

Worry makes the wrinkles; worry cuts the deep, down-glancing lines on the face;

worry is the worst disease of our modern times.

Care is contagious; it is hard work being cheerful at a funeral,

and it is a good deal harder to keep the frown from your face

when you are in the throng of the worry worn ones.

Yet, we have no right to be dispensers of gloom;

no matter how heavy our loads may seem to be we have no right to throw their burden on others

nor even to cast the shadow of them on other hearts.

Anxiety is instability. Fret steals away force.

He who dreads tomorrow trembles today.

Worry is weakness.

The successful men may be always wide-awake, but they never worry.

Fret and fear are like fine sand, thrown into life's delicate mechanism;

they cause more than half the friction; they steal half the power.

Cheer is strength.

Nothing is so well done as that which is done heartily,

and nothing is so heartily done as that which is done happily.

Be happy, is an injunction not impossible of fulfillment.

Pleasure may be an accident; but happiness comes in definite ways.

It is the casting out of our foolish fears that we may have room for a few of our common joys.

It is the telling our worries to wait until we get through appreciating our blessings.

Take a deep breath, raise your chest, lift your eyes from the ground,

look up and think how many things you have for which to be grateful,

and you will find a smile growing where one may long have been unknown.

Take the right kind of thought—for to take no thought would be sin—but take the calm,

unanxious thought of your business, your duties, your difficulties,

your disappointments and all the things that once have caused you fear,

and you will find yourself laughing at most of them.