I wrote several chapters of this book at James Simpson’s Num-Ti-Gah Lodge, on the shore of Bow Lake in the Canadian Rockies. While stopping there one summer, I met Mr. and Mrs. Herbert H. Salinger, of 2298 Pacific Avenue, San Francisco. Mrs. Salinger, a poised, serene woman, gave me the impression that she had never worried. One evening in front of the roaring fireplace, I asked her if she had ever been troubled by worry. “Troubled by it?” she said. “My life was almost ruined by it. Before I learned to conquer worry, I lived through eleven years of self-made hell. I was irritable and hot-tempered. I lived under terrific tension. I would take the bus every week from my home in San Mateo to shop in San Francisco. But even while shopping, I worried myself into a dither: maybe I had left the electric iron connected on the ironing board. Maybe the house had caught fire. Maybe the maid had run off and left the children. Maybe they had been out on their bicycles and been killed by a car. In the midst of my shopping, I would often worry myself into a cold perspiration and rush out and take the bus home to see if everything was all right. No wonder my first marriage ended in disaster.
“My second husband is a lawyer-a quiet, analytical man who never worries about anything. When I became tense and anxious, he would say to me: ‘Relax. Let’s think this out. … What are you really worrying about? Let’s examine the law of averages and see whether or not it is likely to happen.’
“For example, I remember the time we were driving from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to the Carlsbad Caverns-driving on a dirt road-when we were caught in a terrible rainstorm.
“The car was slithering and sliding. We couldn’t control it. I was positive we would slide off into one of the ditches that flanked the road; but my husband kept repeating to me: ‘I am driving very slowly. Nothing serious is likely to happen. Even if the car does slide into the ditch, by the law of averages, we won’t be hurt.’ His calmness and confidence quieted me.
“One summer we were on a camping trip in the Touquin Valley of the Canadian Rockies. One night we were camping seven thousand feet above sea level, when a storm threatened to tear our tents to shreds. The tents were tied with guy ropes to a wooden platform. The outer tent shook and trembled and screamed and shrieked in the wind. I expected every minute to see our tent torn loose and hurled through the sky. I was terrified! But my husband kept saying: ‘Look, my dear, we are travelling with Brewster’s guides. Brewster’s know what they are doing. They have been pitching tents in these mountains for sixty years. This tent has been here for many seasons. It hasn’t blown down yet and, by the law of averages, it won’t blow away tonight; and even if it does, we can take shelter in another tent. So relax. … I did; and I slept soundly the balance of the night.
“A few years ago an infantile-paralysis epidemic swept over our part of California. In the old days, I would have been hysterical. But my husband persuaded me to act calmly. We took all the precautions we could; we kept our children away from crowds, away from school and the movies. By consulting the Board of Health, we found out that even during the worst infantile-paralysis epidemic that California had ever known up to that time, only 1,835 children had been stricken in the entire state of California. And that the usual number was around two hundred or three hundred. Tragic as those figures are, we nevertheless felt that, according to the law of averages, the chances of any one child being stricken were remote.
” ‘By the law of averages, it won’t happen.’ That phrase has destroyed ninety per cent of my worries; and it has made the past twenty years of my life beautiful and peaceful beyond my highest expectations.”
General George Crook-probably the greatest Indian fighter in American history-says in his Autobiography that “nearly all the worries and unhappiness” of the Indians “came from their imagination, and not from reality.”
As I look back across the decades, I can see that that is where most of my worries came from also. Jim Grant told me that that had been his experience, too. He owns the James A. Grant Distributing Company, 204 Franklin Street, New York City. He orders from ten to fifteen car-loads of Florida oranges and grapefruit at a time. He told me that he used to torture himself with such thoughts as: What if there’s a train wreck? What if my fruit is strewn all over the countryside? What if a bridge collapses as my cars are going across it? Of course, the fruit was insured; but he feared that if he didn’t deliver his fruit on time, he might risk the loss of his market. He worried so much that he feared he had stomach ulcers and went to a doctor. The doctor told him there was nothing wrong with him except jumpy nerves. “I saw the light then,” he said, “and began to ask myself questions. I said to myself: ‘Look here, Jim Grant, how many fruit cars have you handled over the years?’ The answer was: ‘About twenty-five thousand.’ Then I asked myself: ‘How many of those cars were ever wrecked?’ The answer was: ‘Oh-maybe five.’ Then I said to myself: ‘Only five-out of twenty-five thousand? Do you know what that means? A ratio of five thousand to one! In other words, by the law of averages, based on experience, the chances are five thousand to one against one of your cars ever being wrecked. So what are you worried about?’
“Then I said to myself: ‘Well, a bridge may collapse!’ Then I asked myself: ‘How many cars have you actually lost from a bridge collapsing?’ The answer was-‘None.’ Then I said to myself: ‘Aren’t you a fool to be worrying yourself into stomach ulcers over a bridge which has never yet collapsed, and over a railroad wreck when the chances are five thousand to one against it!’
“When I looked at it that way,” Jim Grant told me, “I felt pretty silly. I decided then and there to let the law of averages do the worrying for me-and I have not been troubled with my ‘stomach ulcer’ since!”
When Al Smith was Governor of New York, I heard him answer the attacks of his political enemies by saying over and over: “Let’s examine the record … let’s examine the record.” Then he proceeded to give the facts. The next time you and I are worrying about what may happen, let’s take a tip from wise old Al Smith: let’s examine the record and see what basis there is, if any, for our gnawing anxieties. That is precisely what Frederick J. Mahlstedt did when he feared he was lying in his grave. Here is his story as he told it to one of our adult-education classes in New York:
“Early in June, 1944, I was lying in a slit trench near Omaha Beach. I was with the 999th Signal Service Company, and we had just ‘dug in’ in Normandy. As I looked around at that slit trench-just a rectangular hole in the ground-I said to myself: ‘This looks just like a grave.’ When I lay down and tried to sleep in it, it felt like a grave. I couldn’t help saying to myself: ‘Maybe this is my grave.’ When the German bombers began coming over at 11 p.m., and the bombs started falling, I was scared stiff. For the first two or three nights I couldn’t sleep at all. By the fourth or fifth night, I was almost a nervous wreck. I knew that if I didn’t do something, I would go stark crazy. So I reminded myself that five nights had passed, and I was still alive; and so was every man in our outfit. Only two had been injured, and they had been hurt, not by German bombs, but by falling flak, from our own anti-aircraft guns. I decided to stop worrying by doing something constructive. So I built a thick wooden roof over my slit trench, to protect myself from flak. I thought of the vast area over which my unit was spread. I told myself that the only way I could be killed in that deep, narrow slit trench was by a direct hit; and I figured out that the chance of a direct hit on me was not one in ten thousand. After a couple of nights of looking at it in this way, I calmed down and slept even through the bomb raids!”
The United States Navy used the statistics of the law of averages to buck up the morale of their men. One ex-sailor told me that when he and his shipmates were assigned to high-octane tankers, they were worried stiff. They all believed that if a tanker loaded with high-octane gasoline was hit by a torpedo, it exploded and blew everybody to kingdom come.
But the U.S. Navy knew otherwise; so the Navy issued exact figures, showing that out of one hundred tankers hit by torpedoes sixty stayed afloat; and of the forty that did sink, only five sank in less than ten minutes. That meant time to get off the ship-it also meant casualties were exceedingly small. Did this help morale? “This knowledge of the law of averages wiped out my jitters,” said Clyde W. Maas, of 1969 Walnut Street, St. Paul, Minnesota-the man who told this story. “The whole crew felt better. We knew we had a chance; and that, by the law of averages, we probably wouldn’t be killed.” To break the worry habit before it breaks you-here is Rule 3:
“Let’s examine the record.” Let’s ask ourselves: “What are the chances, according to the law of averages, that this event I am worrying about will ever occur?”
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Chapter 9 – Co-Operate With The Inevitable
When I was a little boy, I was playing with some of my friends in the attic of an old, abandoned log house in north-west Missouri. As I climbed down out of the attic, I rested my feet on a window-sill for a moment-and then jumped. I had a ring on my left forefinger; and as I jumped, the ring caught on a nailhead and tore off my finger.
I screamed. I was terrified. I was positive I was going to die. But after the hand healed, I never worried about it for one split second. What would have been the use? … I accepted the inevitable.
Now I often go for a month at a time without even thinking about the fact that I have only three fingers and a thumb on my left hand.
A few years ago, I met a man who was running a freight elevator in one of the downtown office buildings in New York. I noticed that his left hand had been cut off at the wrist. I asked him if the loss of that hand bothered him. He said: “Oh, no, I hardly ever think about it. I am not married; and the only time I ever think about it is when I try to thread a needle.”
It is astonishing how quickly we can accept almost any situation-if we have to-and adjust ourselves to it and forget about it.
I often think of an inscription on the ruins of a fifteenth-century cathedral in Amsterdam, Holland. This inscription says in Flemish: “It is so. It cannot be otherwise.”
As you and I march across the decades of time, we are going to meet a lot of unpleasant situations that are so. They cannot be otherwise. We have our choice. We can either accept them as inevitable and adjust ourselves to them, or we can ruin our lives with rebellion and maybe end up with a nervous breakdown.
Here is a bit of sage advice from one of my favourite philosophers, William James. “Be willing to have it so,” he said. “Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequence of any misfortune.” Elizabeth Connley, of 2840 NE 49th Avenue, Portland, Oregon, had to find that out the hard way. Here is a letter that she wrote me recently: “On the very day that America was celebrating the victory of our armed forces in North Africa,” the letter says, “I received a telegram from the War Department: my nephew- the person I loved most-was missing in action. A short time later, another telegram arrived saying he was dead.
“I was prostrate with grief. Up to that time, I had felt that life had been very good to me. I had a job I loved. I had helped to raise this nephew. He represented to me all that was fine and good in young manhood. I had felt that all the bread I had cast upon the waters was coming back to me as cake! … Then came this telegram. My whole world collapsed. I felt there was nothing left to live for. I neglected my work; neglected my friends. I let everything go. I was bitter and resentful. Why did my loving nephew have to be taken? Why did this good boy-with life all before him-why did he have to be killed? I couldn’t accept it. My grief was so overwhelming that I decided to give up my work, and go away and hide myself in my tears and bitterness.
“I was clearing out my desk, getting ready to quit, when I came across a letter that I had forgotten-a letter from this nephew who had been killed, a letter he had written to me when my mother had died a few years ago. ‘Of course, we will miss her,’ the letter said, ‘and especially you. But I know you’ll carry on. Your own personal philosophy will make you do that. I shall never forget the beautiful truths you taught me. Wherever I am, or how far apart we may be, I shall always remember that you taught me to smile, and to take whatever comes, like a man.’
“I read and reread that letter. It seemed as if he were there beside me, speaking to me. He seemed to be saying to me: ‘Why don’t you do what you taught me to do? Carry on, no matter what happens. Hide your private sorrows under a smile and carry on.’
“So, I went back to my work. I stopped being bitter and rebellious. I kept saying to myself: ‘It is done. I can’t change it. But I can and will carry on as he wished me to do.’ I threw all my mind and strength into my work. I wrote letters to soldiers-to other people’s boys. I joined an adult-education class at night-seeking out new interests and making new friends. I can hardly believe the change that has come over me. I have ceased mourning over the past that is for ever gone. I am living each day now with joy-just as my nephew would have wanted me to do. I have made peace with life. I have accepted my fate. I am now living a fuller and more complete life than I had ever known.”
Elizabeth Connley, out in Portland, Oregon, learned what all of us will have to learn sooner or later: namely, that we must accept and co-operate with the inevitable. “It is so. It cannot be otherwise.” That is not an easy lesson to learn. Even kings on their thrones have to keep reminding themselves of it. The late George V had these framed words hanging on the wall of his library in Buckingham Palace: “Teach me neither to cry for the moon nor over spilt milk.” The same thought is expressed by Schopenhauer in this way: “A good supply of resignation is of the first importance in providing for the journey of life.”
Obviously, circumstances alone do not make us happy or unhappy. It is the way we react to circumstances that determines our feelings. Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven is within you. That is where the kingdom of hell is, too.
We can all endure disaster and tragedy and triumph over them-if we have to. We may not think we can, but we have surprisingly strong inner resources that will see us through if we will only make use of them. We are stronger than we think.
The late Booth Tarkington always said: “I could take anything that life could force upon me except one thing: blindness. I could never endure that.”
Then one day, when he was along in his sixties, Tarkington glanced down at the carpet on the floor. The colours were blurred. He couldn’t see the pattern. He went to a specialist. He learned the tragic truth: he was losing his sight. One eye was nearly blind; the other would follow. That which he feared most had come upon him.