To be sure, there are many disagreeable things that annoy for a time, and then, as the expression goes, we get hardened to them.  But few of us know that this hardening is just so much packed resistance which is going to show itself later in some unpleasant form and make us ill in mind or body.  We have got to yield, yield, yield out of every bit of resistance and resentment to other people if we want to be free.  No reasoning about it is going to do us any good.  No passing back and forth in front of it is going to free us.  We must yield first and then we can see clearly and reason justly.  We must yield first and then we can go back and forth in front of it, and it will only be a reminder to yield every time until the habit of yielding has become habitual and the strength of nerve and strength of character developed by means of the yielding have been established.

Let me explain more fully what I mean by “yielding.”  Every annoyance, resistance, or feeling of resentment contracts us in some way physically; if we turn our attention toward dropping that physical contraction, with a real desire to get rid of the resistance behind it, we shall find that dropping the physical strain opens the way to drop the mental and moral strain, and when we have really dropped the strain we invariably find reason and justice and even generosity toward others waiting to come to us.

There is one important thing to be looked out for in this normal process of freeing ourselves from other people.  A young girl said once to her teacher:  “I got mad the other day and I relaxed, and the more I relaxed the madder I got!”

“Did you want to get over the anger?” asked the teacher.

“No, I didn’t,” was the prompt and ready answer.

Of course, as this child relaxed out of the tension of her anger, there was only more anger to take its place, and the more she relaxed the more free her nerves were to take the impression of the anger hoarded up in her; consequently it was as she said:  the more she relaxed the “madder” she got.  Later, this same little girl came to understand fully that she must have a real desire to get over her anger in order to have better feelings come up after she had dropped the contraction of the anger.

I know of a woman who has been holding such steady hatred for certain other people that the strain of it has kept her ill.  And it is all a matter of feeling:  first, that these people have interfered with her welfare; second, that they differ from her in opinion.  Every once in a while her hatred finds a vent and spends itself in tears and bitter words.  Then, after the external relief of letting out her pent-up feeling, she closes up again and one would think from her voice and manner—­if one did not look very deep in—­that she had only kindliness for every one.  But she stays nervously ill right along.

How could she do otherwise with that strain in her?  If she were constitutionally a strong woman this strain of hatred would have worn on her, though possibly not have made her really ill; but, being naturally sensitive and delicate, the strain has kept her an invalid altogether.