I shall never forget the night,a few years ago,when Marion J.Douglas was a student inone of my classes.（I have not used his real name.He requested me,for personal reasons,not toreveal his identity.）But here is his real story as he told it before one of our adult-educationclasses.He told us how tragedy had struck at his home,not once,but twice.The first time hehad lost his five-year-old daughter,a child he adored.He and his wife thought they couldn'tendure that first loss;but,as he said:"Ten months later,God gave us another little girl——andshe died in five days."

　　This double bereavement was almost too much to bear."I couldn't take it,"this fathertold us."I couldn't sleep,I couldn't eat,I couldn't rest or relax.My nerves were utterly shakenand my confidence gone."At last he went to doctors;one recommended sleeping pills andanother recommended a trip.

　　He tried both,but neither remedy helped.He said:"My body felt as if it were encased ina vice,and the jaws of the vice were being drawn tighter and tighter."The tension of grief——ifyou have ever been paralysed by sorrow,you know what he meant.

　　"But thank God,I had one child leff——a four-year-old son.He gave me the solution tomy problem.One afternoon as I sat around feeling sorry for myself,he asked:'Daddy,willyou build a boat for me？'I was in no mood to build a boat;in fact,I was in no mood to doanything.But my son is a persistent little fellow！I had to give in.

　　"Building that toy boat took about three hours.By the time it was finished,I realised thatthose three hours spent building that boat were the first hours of mental relaxation and peacethat I had had in months！

　　"That discovery jarred me out of my lethargy and caused me to do a bit of thinking——thefirst real thinking I had done in months.I realised that it is difficult to worry while you arebusy doing something that requires planning and thinking.In my case,building the boat hadknocked worry out of the ring.So I resolved to keep busy.

　　"The following night,I went from room to room in the house,compiling a list of jobs thatought to be done.Scores of items needed to be repaired:bookcases,stair steps,storm windows,window shades,knobs,locks,leaky taps.Astonishing as it seems,in the course of two weeksI had made a list of 242 items that needed attention.

　　"During the last two years I have completed most of them.Besides,I have filled my lifewith stimulating activities.Two nights per week I attend adult-education classes in New York.I have gone in for civic activities in my home town and I am now chairman of the school board.

　　I attend scores of meetings.I help collect money for the Red Cross and other activities.I am sobusy now that I have no time for worry."

　　No time for worry！.That is exactly what Winston Churchill said when he was workingeighteen hours a day at the height of the war.When he was asked ff he worried about histremendous responsibilities,he said:"I'm too busy.I have no time for worry."

　　Charles Kettering was in that same fix whea he started out to invent a self-starter forautomobiles.Mr.Kettering was,until his recent retirement,vice-president of General Motors incharge of the world-famous General Motors Research Corporation.But in those days,he wasso poor that he had to use the hayloft of a barn as a laboratory.To buy grocodes,he had touse fifteen hundred dollars that his wife had made by giving piano lessons;later,he had toborrow five hundred dollars on his life insurance.I asked his wife if she wasn't worried at atime like that."Yes,"she replied,"I was so worried I couldn't sleep;but Mr.Ketteringwasn't.He was too absorbed in his work to worry."

　　The great scientist,Pasteur,spoke of"the peace that is found in h'braries andlaboratories."Why is peace found there？Because the men in libraries and laboratories areusually too absorbed in their tasks to worry about themselves.Research men rarely havenervous breakdowns.They haven't time for such luxuries.

　　Why does such a simple thing as keeping busy help to drive out anxiety？Because of alawwone of the most fundamental laws ever revealed by psychology.And that law is:that itis utterly impossible for any human mind,no matter how brilliant,to think of more than onething at any given time.You don't quite believe it？Very well,then,let's try an experiment.

　　Suppose you lean right back now,close your eyes,and try,at the same instant,to thinkof the Statue of L~erty and of what you plan to do tomorrow morning.（Go ahead,try it.）

　　You found out,didn't you,that you could focus on either thought in turn,but never onboth simultaneously？Well,the same thing is true in the field of emotions.We cannot bepepped up and enthusiastic about doing something exciting and feel dragged down by worry atthe veery same time.

　　One kind of emotion drives out the other.And it was that simple discovery that enabledArmy psychiatrists to perform such miracles during the Second World War.

　　When men came out of battle so shaken by the experience that they were called"psychoneurotic',Army doctors presen~oed"Keep'em busy"as a cure.

　　Every waking minute of these nerve-shocked men was filled with activity-usually outdooractivity,such as fishing,hunting,playing ball,golf,taking pictures,making gardens,anddancing.They were given no time for brooding over their tern"ole experiences.

　　"Occupational therapy"is the term now used by psychiatry when work is prescribed asthough it were a medicine.It is not new.The old Greek physicians were advocating it fivehundred years before Christ was born！

　　The Quakers were using it in Philadelphia in Ben Franklin's time.A man who visited aQuaker sanatorium in 1774 was shocked to see that the patients who were mentally ill werebusy spinning flax.He thought these poor unfortunates were being exploited——until theQuakers explained that they found that their patients actually improved when they did a littlework.It was soothing to the nerves.

　　……