FOREWORD

    I the curse of worry
   II ours is the age of worry
  III nervous prostration and worry
   IV holy writ, the Sages and worry
    V the needlessness and uselessness of worry
   VI the selfishness of worry
  VII causes of worry
 VIII protean forms of worry
   IX health worries
    X the worries of parents
   XI marital worries
  XII the worry of the squirrel cage
 XIII religious worries and worriers
  XIV ambition and worry
   XV envy and worry
  XVI discontent and worry
 XVII cowardice and worry
XVIII worry about manners and speech
  XIX the worries of jealousy
   XX the worries of suspicion
  XXI the worries of impatience
 XXII the worries of anticipation
XXIII how our worry affects others
 XXIV worry versus indifference
  XXV worries and hobbies

JUST BE GLAD

BY JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

  O heart of mine, we shouldn’t worry so,
  What we have missed of calm we couldn’t have, you know!

  What we’ve met of stormy pain,
  And of sorrow’s driving rain,
  We can better meet again,
        If it blow.

  We have erred in that dark hour, we have known,
  When the tear fell with the shower, all alone.

  Were not shine and shower blent
  As the gracious Master meant? 
  Let us temper our content
        With His own.

  For we know not every morrow
        Can be sad;
  So forgetting all the sorrow
        We have had,
  Let us fold away our fears,
  And put by our foolish tears,
  And through all the coming years,
        Just be glad.

FOREWORD

Between twenty and thirty years ago, I became involved in a series of occurrences and conditions of so painful and distressing a character that for over six months I was unable to sleep more than one or two hours out of the twenty-four.  In common parlance I was “worrying myself to death,” when, mercifully, a total collapse of mind and body came.  My physicians used the polite euphemism of “cerebral congestion” to describe my state which, in reality, was one of temporary insanity, and it seemed almost hopeless that I should ever recover my health and poise.  For several months I hovered between life and death, and my brain between reason and unreason.

In due time, however, both health and mental poise came back in reasonable measure, and I asked myself what would be the result if I returned to the condition of worry that culminated in the disaster.  This question and my endeavors at its solution led to the gaining of a degree of philosophy which materially changed my attitude toward life.  Though some of the chief causes of my past worry were removed there were still enough adverse and untoward circumstances surrounding me to give me cause for worry, if I allowed myself to yield to it, so I concluded that my mind must positively and absolutely be prohibited from dwelling upon those things that seemed justification for worry.  And I determined to set before me the ideal of a life without worry.