CHAPTER 3HELP FOR THE DRUDGING WIFE
IF I had not changed my point of view I doubt not I should still be drudging away at dishwashing and cooking for a family. For in my life I have learned by experience that whatever I hate or fear comes upon me and sticks there until I learn to meet it without hate or fear, and to use it to good advantage. Life has a way of setting us the same lesson over and over again until we learn to understand it and be interested in it and use it artistically and to best advantage.
Then we find Life passing us out new lessons. It is our own unwillingness and lack of interest that keeps us pinned to petty tasks. You know from a thousand experiences that when you are not interested in a task your thoughts wander and your hands wander and it takes twice as long to finish the work. Then why can't you see that the same thing holds true in any work and at all times?
Drudgery is "the best thing in its place." Its place is that of a spur to keep you from falling totally to sleep in your tracks. It makes you want to change things, and it sharpens your wits to find a way to change them. When my wits grew sharp enough I began to see that what I could not detest out of my life I might possibly love out of it. In a glimmer of gumption I heard this: "Overcome evil with good." In figuring how to pour good into the "evil" drudgery that persisted in hanging around for me to do, I discovered that I could get interested in the drudgery, doing things in a different and better way than I had ever done them before. So I poured into my "evils" more and more of the good wisdom and interest which came welling up from within me, which had only been waiting to be turned in some given direction.
I had been longing to turn this wisdom and interest into new channels, but the drudgery had prevented. It had never occurred to me to turn my wisdom, my spiritual power and interest into the drudgery itself. I never once thought that I could develop my powers by turning my love and interest into such common scrub work as I had to do!
I was like a child who refuses its scales and five- finger exercises and demands waltzes to develop its piano playing upon! I never once thought that the very same movements, patience, interest, self- command, managing genius, etc., that I could use in my drudgery if I tried, would be required also in any great and glorious work which I wanted to do but couldn't get to. As I couldn't get to the great and glorious things I resolved to pour my spiritual forces and-interest into what I had to do. It was not until the way began to open for a more congenial work that I realized I had actually developed myself on the drudgery, so that I was ready to step into the greater work when it offered. Had I continued to drudge, with my interest always leaking away in other directions I'd still be in the same old "hard lot."
That old "evil" was the husk out of which has grown all my present good.
In my present "evils" I see the germs of yet greater good.
Sometimes "giving up hope" is the first step toward the thing we desire. Or perhaps it is the last step. Anyway I know that as long as we keep straining and striving after a thing, we don't get it because the straining and striving put us out of condition. Straining and striving are themselves dis-ease. You are health.
If you could just be still and dwell with that thought until it possesses you, the thing you desire would soon manifest.
All healing is self-healing. You would have experienced perfect health long ago if you could have done your part — if you could have believed thoroughly in health in the present tense. But you see, dearie, you are still trying to get something. There will surely come a time that you will realize that you have it.
Say, I am Health, and rest in that. Humor yourself when you do not feel health; instead of fretting against the feelings. Just relax and be comfortable, while the powers within you right things again.
Then aim to be more equable in thought, emotion, and action, in your every-day living, until you establish the habit of equanimity. "Do your work as Well as you can and be kind."
Don't burden yourself with trying to ape your neighbors.
Don't climb socially.
Live your own impulses and be glad.
Take quiet times every day, still the men chatter, and lay for your very own desires and impulses as a cat lays for a mouse.
Be persistent, but never strenuous.
In time you will begin to feel life and health playing through you, where heretofore it has only crawled sluggishly, dully, — discouraged perhaps by the emotional storms and mental outbursts it has met, and expects again to meet around the next corner in the nerve-paths it must follow.
HOW CONCENTRATION ELIMINATES DRUDGERY >
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