The Worrier 

I

‘IT’S all right now; I’ve done with worrying!’  Those were the last words of old Martha Menzies; at least, they were her last words to me. I can see her now as she lay back restfully upon her pillow, her silver-grey locks tumbled prettily about her terribly wrinkled face. Those furrows were always a rebuke to her. Whenever, during the last few years of her life, she looked into the mirror, those corrugations seemed to chide her for having allowed the cares of life to bite so deeply into her soul. 

 ‘It was always my besetting sin,’ she told me, one bright autumn afternoon, as, reclining in her rocking-chair, she sat in the sunshine just outside her door; ‘it was always my weakness. When I was just a tiny toddler, in the old home in Hampshire, my father used to call mehis little worrier. I used to knit my brows and worry about everything. Daddy used to call me to him, perch me on his knee, and smooth the wrinkles from my forehead.  

‘ “Now, keep it smooth,” he used to say, “don’t let it pucker again. Why, you’ll be an old woman before you’re twenty!” And he taught me to recite a little verse that I think he must have made up himself: 

I’ve learned as the days have passed me, 
Fretting never lifts a load.
And that worry, much or little,
  Never smoothes an irksome road.  

‘But it was of no use. I worried about my lessons; I worried about my games; I worried about my companions; I worried about everything. If I had to be at a certain place at a certain time, I watched the clock for hours beforehand lest I should be late; if there was to be a picnic or an outing, I worried terribly about the weather; and, when an examination was approaching, I could scarcely eat or sleep for worrying about it. Poor old Dad,’ she exclaimed, a far-away look coming into her eyes- a look that told me that she had left her Australian garden and was back in the Hampshire lanes- ‘poor old Dad, it used to worry him to see me worry so!’  

She sat back meditatively, a sad little smile playing about her thin, drawn face; and, during the pause that ensued, her daughter appeared with the afternoon tea.  

‘That’s right, mother,’ exclaimed Bella, with a mischievous little laugh, ‘confess your sins to the minister; it may help you to forsake them. For you’re just as big a sinner as ever, you know, in spite of all your pretensions to penitence. Why, last night, just because I was five minutes later than usual in returning from the choir practice, you worried yourself into a perfect fever. Now, don’t make matters worse by denying it; you know it’s true! 

Poor old Martha, throwing up her disengaged hand in a playful gesture of confession, surrender, and shame, turned to me with one of her sweet, regretful smiles. Notwithstanding the furrows that she deplored, her face was really extremely beautiful. If something of her earlier grace had withered, a mellow gentleness had crept into her expression, imparting a charm that, in girlhood days, it could never have possessed. Everybody liked to talk things over with Martha: she was the soul of sympathy: she always seemed to understand.  Oddly enough, and without seeing anything incongruous in her behavior, she worried about her very propensity to worry. It worried her that she had been such a worrier. 

‘Katie Douglas came to see me last night,’ she told me, in the course of one of my last visits to her bedside, ‘and brought me those Chrysanthemums. Of course, Katie’s only a girl, and she has a lot to learn. But she’s a good girl and I like to hear her talk. And last night she said that she thinks it’s wicked to worry. She was telling me about a sermon that her minister preached a few Sundays back. He said that you can’t be a worrier and a Christian too. She told me his text, but I forgot what it was: my poor old head’s no good now for remembering such things. I think it was from the Sermon on the Mount- the bit about the lilies and the ravens, you know. Or perhaps it was the passage where Paul tells us to be careful for nothing: I’m not sure: I know she talked about both of them. But she made me feel that I was a very wicked old woman and very likely no Christian at all. I’ve been worrying about it ever since. What do you think?’  I saw that she was very tired, so I passed the matter off for the time being with a few playful words, and, smoothing her forehead with my hand by way of farewell, I promised to come back and go fully into the matter another day. 

II 

 In point of fact, as is generally the case when we give evasive answers on the pretext of consideration for the questioner, I was not very sure of myself. I envy those who, like Kate Douglas, can live tranquil lives- lives into which no surge of worry can find its way. They make me feel- as Kate made old Martha feel- thoroughly ashamed of myself. For I, too, am a worrier. I suspect that most of us are. We are living in a neurasthenic age. We all worry. We worry from morning till night and count ourselves happy if we escape worrying from night until morning; we worry on week days and we worry on Sundays; we worry about big things and we worry about small things; we worry about our business and we worry about our pastimes; we worry, in short, about everything.

Worry has become our normal attitude towards life. We have acquired the habit. We know that it is a pernicious habit, a silly habit, a ruinously expensive habit; but, like the man who has once started to run downhill, we find it almost impossible to stop. We know perfectly well- how can we shut our eyes to a fact so obvious?- that the worry that keeps our nerves on edge all day, and that robs our eyes of their due repose at night, is the fruitful source of nearly all our; aches and pains, our maladies and diseases; but how does that affect the question?  We cannot cease worrying at will. Nerves are things with which you cannot argue. Worrying is not to be laid aside by the simple process of signing a pledge or registering a resolution.

Every night a thousand men assure themselves that worry is absurd, futile, preposterous. How can worry help matters? It can only make confusion worse confounded. Thinking thus, they catch themselves humming a bar or two of a popular air: What’s the use of worrying?  It never was worth while. Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag  And smile, smile, smile! In obedience to such cheerful and easy-going mandates, these victims, weary of the rack, solemnly promise themselves that they will worry no more. And then, switching off the light, they tumble into bed, and, worrying furiously, toss and fume in fevered restlessness throughout the endless night! I write on a subject of which, to my sorrow, I know something.

III

 I have somewhere suggested that it is high time that somebody wrote a book on The Art of Worrying Well. Very seldom do we hear or read a sensible word on the subject of worry. We are like men who find themselves at sea with neither chart nor compass. At the one extreme we have pietists and idealists who, like Katie Douglas, declare, absurdly enough, that all worry is wicked. And, at the other extreme, we have men- good men, sensible men, lovable men-who worry themselves into premature graves. Between these two insanities there is a No-man’s-land of common-sense that lies unoccupied and unexplored. Worry is a very good thing in its way.

Those who condemn worry in terms that suggest that to worry is to play ducks and drakes with the Ten Commandments never stop to explain why, if worry be essentially and inherently wicked, we are sent into the world endowed with such an infinite capacity for doing it. Obviously, we were made to worry; but we were made to worry wisely. We were made to take life seriously and to feel the gravity of things. The man who never worries about his business will never have a business worth worrying about.

There come to every nation great moments of acute crisis and grave anxiety in which all things seem to be at risk. The very foundations of the national life are shaken. Destiny seems to be trembling in the balance. It would strike dismay into the hearts of the people if they were assured that, in that fateful hour, their leaders were carrying light hearts, smiling faces, and easy minds. There came days, in the course of the Great War, that will never be forgotten by those who lived through them. Nothing seemed to be going right. Disaster on land followed hard on the heels of disaster at sea. Every day we were told of retreats, evacuations, and desolating losses. The nation faced those emergencies with quiet courage and inflexible resolution. During those dark days the entire people thought sympathetically of the men who bore the fearful burden of responsibility. The Prime Minister, the members of the War Cabinet, the military and naval commanders – upon these men there devolved a task that ordinary citizens could not contemplate without a shudder. In that crisis – one of the most momentous in our history – the nation expected its leaders to worry. It was their bounden duty to worry. A report that they were not worrying would have caused greater consternation than the news of a score of reverses.

There come times when it becomes imperative that a doctor should worry about his patient, that a barrister should worry about his case, that a farmer should worry about his cattle and his crops, and that every man should worry about the task that has been specially assigned him. It is only through mental stress – the stress that follows upon failure and discontent – that improvements are devised and remedies conceived. If men never worried, things would go on, age after age, in the same old way; we should let our wheels revolve in the well-worn ruts; and civilization would be stultitied by stagnation.  The trouble is that in this, as in so many other things, we go to ridiculous excess. It is our duty to worry about one or two things – big things; things worthy of our worry; the things that we were sent into the world to worry about. Instead of being content to worry on this moderate and conservative scale, we foolishly proceed to worry about everything!

Having once acquired the art of worrying, we allow the art to degenerate into a habit; and, having reached that stage, we apply our skill as worriers with just as great readiness to insignificant molehills as to towering and snowcapped ranges. We lose all sense of proportion, and we quickly pay the penalty. For worry is a lire that burns up the brain. By scattering our nervous energy broadcast we precipitate two disasters. In the first place, we become bankrupt of vitality. We reduce our mental and physical stock-in-trade to a condition of absolute exhaustion, and exhaustion, as Sir James Paget used to say, is the fertile source of all disease. 

 Moreover, by our lack of discrimination, We render life inartistic and pitifully futile. It is the duty of the novelist and the dramatist to introduce a noble array of characters; but they must be careful to make one or two stand out from all the rest. By the very constitution of our minds, we are incapable of taking an equal interest in a multitude of heroes. The artist may introduce into his painting a thousand separate objects; but one or two must stand conspicuously forth upon the canvas. The speaker must emphasize one or two words only in each sentence: to emphasize all is to emphasize none. We are born worriers; and our education is not complete until it has taught us to use, artistically and scientifically, this fundamental propensity. A wise man will make it his business to discover the things that are really worth worrying about; and, having made his discovery, will set himself with all his heart to worry about those things- and about nothing in all the world beside. 

IV

 Faith, of course, relieves the pressure tremendously – or should do. The trouble is that, like old Martha Menzies, we walk through the world with a big bank balance and a bulky check-book, but make no use of either of them. Our faith is no faith; it fails to function. We all remember the sparrow’s rebuke: 

Said the robin to the Sparrow,
‘I should dearly like to know
Why these anxious human beings
Run about and worry so.’
Said the Sparrow to the robin,
‘I think that it must be
That they have no Heavenly Father
Such as cares for you and me.’ 

 The last illness of Martha Menzies was a short and painless one. During its progress I visited her twice. As I approached her door, the roses and the azaleas, the geraniums and the cinerarias, the snapdragons and the hollyhocks, the lupins and the columbines, the nasturtiums and the sweet peas, the poppies and the pansies were making a brave and brilliant show; but it was no longer possible for poor old Martha to sit enthroned in her rocking chair in the midst of them. Bella adorned her mother’s little room with some of the brightest blossoms; and Martha’s fancy helped her to visualize the rest.  

‘Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come’ the old lady exclaimed, as I entered the room early in that final week of hers. ‘I’m so worried at having been such a worrier. I don’t see how one can worry and trust at the same time; and, now that I’m going to see my Savior face to face, I may find that He’s vexed with me for having distrusted him. I know that I should have been hurt if Bella had treated me as I’ve treated him.’ I smiled and told her not to add to her earlier worries by worrying about that.  

‘He knows all about it,’ I assured her, ‘and he understands. He knows, too, how you’ve suffered as a result of your worrying- the anxious days and the sleepless nights. See the scars that worry has left,’ I added, stroking her wrinkled face and forehead; ‘don’t you think that he sees them as clearly as I do? And, besides, he hears what you have just said. He knows how sorry you are for having even seemed to distrust him. And, reading the secrets of your inmost soul, he sees that you love him too well to treat him unkindly.’  

‘Ah, well,’ she sighed, ‘that’s a great comfort. But I want you to kneel down before you go, and ask him to forgive a poor old worrier for having worried so.’ 

I did; and, when I rose, her eyes were streaming. But, like sunshine through shower, she smiled radiantly through her tears; and, pressing her hand in farewell, I left her. 

My next – and last – visit was paid less than an hour before she died. It may have been fancy; but I really thought that her face was less furrowed. It was as though a divine hand had smoothed it with a soft caress. Her hands lay perfectly still; her eyes were wonderfully restful. She seemed the very picture of peace. I leaned over her and repeated softly a few of those deathless passages that never fail to minister comfort and courage to pilgrims preparing to ford the river.  

She closed her eyes, soothed into slumber, as I thought, by the subdued tones of my voice. But I soon discovered that her eager mind had absorbed every word. I stopped; and, on the instant, she opened her eyes again. 

‘Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!’ she exclaimed, with a smile so full of gratitude and peace and joy that the very memory of it haunts me like a benediction. Then, taking my hand, she drew me down and whispered brokenly, ‘It’s all right now; I’ve done with worrying!’ Another flickering smile, full of meaning, and she lay back exhausted upon her pillow, closing her eyes. In that peaceful hush I crept from the room. I understand that, after I left, she uttered a few affectionate words to Bella and two of her nieces; but I shall always treasure, as her final testament, her triumphant assurance that the poor old worrier had overcome her tyrannical worries at last and had vanquished them for ever.

-F.W. Boreham