Chapter 21: The Habit of Not Feeling Well

The outer is always the shadow and form of the inner. — Mozoomdar

Goethe stated an important truth when he said: “All men would live long, but no man would grow old.” Every normal human being desires health, — beauty, — life, in all its joy and fulness. The realization of such desires would effectually prevent us from growing old, no matter how the years might be counted.

Is it possible for us to actualize here and now what we so ardently long for? If it were not, the longing would not be so strongly implanted in us. If we accept this conclusion, we must go a step farther and acknowledge that the conditions we desire are under our own control.

Few people realize that their ailments are largely self-induced. They get into a habit of not feeling well. If they rise in the morning with a slight headache or some other trifling indisposition, instead of trying to mount above this condition they take a positive pleasure in expatiating upon their feelings to anyone who will listen. Instead of combating the tendency to illness by filling the lungs with pure, fresh air, they dose themselves with “headache tablets” or some other patent specific warranted to cure whatever ill they think they are suffering from. They begin to pity themselves and try to attract pity and sympathy from others. Unconsciously, by detailing and dwelling upon their symptoms, they reenforce the first simple suggestions of illness by a whole army of thoughts and fears and images of disease, until they are unfitted to do a day's work in their homes or offices.

It is said that man is a lazy animal. We are all more or less prone to indolence and it is the easiest and most natural thing in the world for young people to accustom themselves to lying down or lounging on a sofa because they think they are tired or not well. Much of the so-called invalidism is simply laziness fostered and indulged from childhood.