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Lesson 46 |
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Hobbies |
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Who, according to the author, are 'Fortune's favoured children'? |
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A gifted American psychologist has said, 'Worry is a spasm of the emotion; |
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the mind catches hold of something and will not let it go.' |
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It is useless to argue with the mind in this condition. |
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The stronger the will, the more futile the task. |
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One can only gently insinuate something else into its convulsive grasp. |
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And if this something else is rightly chosen, if it is really attended by the illumination of another field of interest, |
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gradually, and often quite swiftly, the old undue grip relaxes and the process of recuperation and repair begins. |
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The cultivation of a hobby and new forms of interest is therefore a policy of the first importance to a public man. |
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But this is not a business that can be undertaken in a day or swiftly improvised by a mere command of the will. |
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The growth of alternative mental interests is a long process. |
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The seeds must be carefully chosen; they must fall on good ground; |
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they must be sedulously tended, if the vivifying fruits are to be at hand when needed. |
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To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies, and they must all be real. |
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It is no use starting late in life to say: 'I will take an interest in this or that.' |
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Such an attempt only aggravates the strain of mental effort. |
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A man may acquire great knowledge of topics unconnected with his daily work, and yet get hardly any benefit or relief. |
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It is no use doing what you like; you have got to like what you do. |
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Broadly speaking, human beings may be divided into three classes: |
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those who are toiled to death, those who are worried to death, and those who are bored to death. |
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It is no use offering the manual labourer, |
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tired out with a hard week's sweat and effort the chance of playing a game of football or baseball on Saturday afternoon. |
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It is no use inviting the politician or the professional or business man, |
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who has been working or worrying about serious things for six days, |
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to work or worry about trifling things at the weekend. |
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As for the unfortunate people who can command everything they want, |
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who can gratify every caprice and lay their hands on almost every object of desire-- |
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for them a new pleasure a new excitement is only an additional satiation. |
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In vain they rush frantically round from place to place, |
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trying to escape from avenging boredom by mere clatter and motion. |
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For them discipline in one form or another is the most hopeful path. |
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It may also be said that rational, industrious, useful human beings are divided into two classes: |
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first, those whose work is work and whose pleasure is pleasure; |
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and secondly, those whose work and pleasure are one. |
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Of these the former are the majority. They have their compensations. |
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The long hours in the office or the factory bring with them as their reward, |
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not only the means of sustenance, but a keen appetite for pleasure even in its simplest and most modest forms. |
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But Fortune's favoured children belong to the second class. |
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Their life is a natural harmony. |
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For them the working hours are never long enough. |
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Each day is a holiday, and ordinary holidays, when they come, |
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are grudged as enforced interruptions in an absorbing vocation. |
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Yet to both classes, the need of an alternative outlook, of a change of atmosphere of a diversion of effort, is essential. |
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Indeed, it may well be that those whose work is their pleasure |
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are those who most need the means of banishing it at intervals from their minds. |