Drop the Needless Care

Humanity is prone to worry, and some portions of it have a good right to be anxious.  Many burdens press constantly on all earnest natures, and the routine performance of almost any duty involves more or less drudgery, and perhaps friction.  Most people, however, add unnecessarily to their own anxieties by assuming cares that do not belong to them—which form no real part of their duty or their work.  Some of these burdens are pure creations of one’s own excited or morbid imagination, while others appertain to the life or duty of others, and not to us.

It is the part of prudence, especially in these very disturbed times, to slough off all needless anxieties, to decline the profitless social engagement to eliminate the foolish waste, and to drop the needless care.  What is our particular temptation in the line of worrying?  What is our petted melancholy?  What kind of sadness makes us happy?  Whatever it be, let us get rid of it at once, for it is a hindrance and not a help in our religious life and our civic relations.  We should detach ourselves not from duty, but from the worries that gather about other people’s duties.  This sentence may well serve as a motto in these troublous times: “Be content with doing, without excitement, the little which depends on you, and let all else be to you as if it were not.”