In the first place it is not a great deal of use telling even children , as I have already suggested , not to be silly or to pull themselves together .sx Far better to help them to face whatever it is that is worrying them , to find the original cause and then deal with it ; show it up either for the sham it is- and many fears are based upon completely irrational pre-conceived notions- or to show how we may deal with it so as to remove the power to torment us that it seems to possess .sx Even worse is to laugh .sx Tremendous damage may be done to a child by laughing at what are very real fears .sx As adults , we know that their fears are groundless , indeed to us they appear laughable , but to a child they are very real .sx Not that I am suggesting that children should be molly-coddled- they must be made to face their fears , to see through them and come out on the other side as victors .sx To ridicule them only pushes them farther into themselves , so that they become unable to speak about it to anybody and the seeds of any amount of trouble are sown , the harvest of which may still be being reaped at forty or fifty .sx Far better to agree with a child that a particular situation is frightening , and then to face it together until the child can see how unnecessary its fears were .sx Because situations which may contain all the elements of fear can arise suddenly , it is a good idea to condition a child to some extent against it .sx To keep a child of twelve or thirteen under the impression that nothing nasty ever happens is not merely dishonest , it is unwise .sx As I shall suggest in a later chapter there are some situations which occur less frequently than they did once , or at least do not now arise until a later period of life , but this is no reason for leaving a child in complete ignorance to the extent of even lying to it when it asks questions .sx A little more honesty , even if one refrains from going into too many details , would help many a child to make a proper adjustment to life as it grows up .sx Let us look at Jesus .sx We do not , I think , see there a life without fear .sx There are several instances where he seemed unable to go on .sx In Gethsemane He prayed that the cup should pass from Him .sx Jesus shows us the way to face life .sx To see all the latent frightening possibilities and yet by facing them and knowing God is with us and that , with Him , there is nothing that can finally defeat us .sx More than that , that God has something important to do with our lives and that the nearer we get to Him , the stronger we become .sx .sx .Today A wonderful thought In the dawn was given .sx . And the thought Was this :sx That a secret plan Is hid in my hand ; That my hand is big Big , Because of the plan That God , Who dwells in my hand , Knows this secret plan , Of the things He will do for the world Using my hand .sx Toyohiko Kagawa .sx PRAYER .sx Loving Saviour , who experienced all human emotion , and whose sensitive nature knows better than we do , what it is to be really afraid , help us to know that when we face life boldly , many of the shadows are seen to be allies and not enemies and that , come what may , we are never alone when we are with Thee .sx Amen .sx CHAPTER FIVE .sx TIREDNESS .sx MOST people would probably regard tiredness as a purely physical thing .sx The cure for which is sleep .sx This is only partly true .sx Many people wake up tired of a morning and no amount of rest seems to make any difference .sx Sleep , to be effective , must be of that child-like quality which comes from innocence .sx To others , the long hours of the night bring only a disturbed tossing and turning which causes them to wake feeling worse than when they went to bed .sx We may begin to understand this a little better when we realize that tiredness itself is largely in the mind .sx Very few people , under normal conditions , work themselves to a standstill .sx The mind tires first and conveys the impression of tiredness to the body .sx This can be proved by noting the effect of a new stimulus on somebody who feels thoroughly tired .sx Suppose a mother has news late at night that her child is in danger .sx She will undertake a journey which , an hour before , she would have declared impossible .sx Even more simply , test your own reactions to different situations .sx There are some which bring on an almost immediate feeling of tiredness- such as when your wife mentions the washing-up- while others , if they refer to something you like doing , bring a veritable surge of energy .sx Many a girl who is 'too tired to help mum' will later jump up with no apparent tiredness at all when her boy friend calls and go for a long walk .sx Nor is she necessarily being deceitful .sx She really did feel tired until the mind got the necessary injection of a fresh- and an attractive- interest !sx Tiredness has , therefore , as much to do with our mental state as with our physical exhaustion .sx A disturbed mind can bring the healthiest body to a sense of fatigue .sx They wonder why they get no rest at night , even if they do sleep .sx They drag themselves around and can become a burden to their families and their friends .sx Any mental confusion can cause this and the best way is probably to seek advice .sx As we are unable to cure our own bodies if the cause of our pain is too deep seated , so we are unable to cure our own minds , if the trouble is a complicated one involving careful and patient treatment .sx One of the greatest steps forward that has been made this century is the way in which illness of the mind is no longer feared or shunned , and is in fact no differently regarded than physical illness .sx There is , nevertheless , a great deal of tiredness which comes from no major complication but results from an inability to deal with life , especially under the diverse pattern which is the twentieth century .sx In the days when most people were born , lived and died within the boundaries of the village , it was not difficult for anybody to live a day at a time .sx Even those who held a high and responsible office lived in far greater simplicity than their successors .sx When news from the Continent took days , from America weeks , from the Far East , months , even a Prime Minister could go to sleep in blissful ignorance of what might be happening at the other end of England , whereas today , everybody , let alone the Prime Minister , knows of happenings the other side of the world , within minutes of their taking place .sx In other ways , too , life for the ordinary individual has become so complex that it taxes the mind .sx Two hundred years ago , men lived and worked in one place , their lives were of one piece .sx Now a man may live twenty , thirty even sixty miles from his work .sx The only connexion is the pipeline of the railway on which they travel day by day .sx In many cases , their homes know little of their place of work and their associates at the office or works wonder what they are possibly like in the surroundings of their homes .sx It is easy , desperately easy , to lead a 'double' life without ever deliberately planning to do so or in fact being conscious of what is going on .sx It is easier to live life in compartments but over the years it builds up , and to do so inevitably builds up tensions which need to be handled correctly .sx Can we then frame some 'rules' which may enable us to live life as fully as possible , without having our energy sapped by unnecessary weariness .sx ( a ) Order makes for a decrease in tiredness .sx We have a saying 'My head will never save my feet' .sx Time after time we forget something and have to go back upstairs or down to the shops .sx If we ever stopped to consider how much energy- and time- we lose this way in the course of a day we would be staggered .sx Some of it is inevitable , and we do not want to become too pernickety .sx Nevertheless , we could all probably be a little more orderly for we so frequently just muddle through .sx The housewife would find life far less tiring if she made a list , followed a routine of work rather than getting from one thing to the next .sx The business man would find that he reached the end of the day with far less strain if he was a little more systematic .sx To drift aimlessly along is more wearying than anything else .sx If we would only sit down and write out all the necessary jobs waiting to be done and then work quietly through them , we would find life considerably less exhausting- and in the end we would do more .sx There may be some who will argue that routine destroys the soul .sx It is so easy , they say , to get into a rut .sx Save us from the school curriculum and even worse the school system whereby for meals everybody knows beforehand exactly what , on any given day of the week , they are going to have .sx If- such a critic may say- you are calling us to adventure , do not strangle us before we start by putting us into a strait-jacket called 'order' .sx I am more than conscious of this .sx How anybody can go through the same routine day in and day out for forty years I find difficult to understand .sx A lot of it is inevitable so that industry and commerce may be kept going- though if ever it becomes possible to work out a system of 'staggered' hours it may do an immense amount of good over and above relieving the pressure on over-crowded trains .sx As it is , with so much of our life already in a predetermined groove , I would hardly like to add further to the dullness which it engenders .sx But I am not arguing for this .sx I know how much of a drag it can be and I was interested some little while ago to hear of a school who tried a six-day timetable .sx They only worked , of course , a five-day week so that in the first week Monday to Friday were days one to five of the timetable , the following Monday was day six and Tuesday started day one again and so on .sx By this means they avoided each week being the same with a pupil knowing exactly what the subject would be on Friday afternoon at 3 p.m.. It was a little complicated to work , of course , and there had to be a big notice in the entrance saying which day of the timetable it was- but it added immensely to the interest and kept everybody on their toes .sx To have order does not mean getting into a dull routine .sx I have great sympathy with the young wife who does not always want to do the washing on a Monday .sx I would not want to either , but if she wants to get through the day without becoming exhausted , she will be well advised to sit down quietly and make a list of everything she has got to do , note the order in which they can most conveniently be done ( or must be done because of other predetermined factors- you must , for example , do your shopping on the morning of the early closing day) .sx She will , in fact , be surprised at what peace of mind ensues .sx ( b ) Concentrate on one thing at a time .sx A list or a plan enables us to put all our energies into the particular matter on hand .sx