Forest City Courier, Mar. 2, 1939

Among our books is a complete copy of Mother Goose. The other day I found a little rhyme that I had never read which shows that I do not know my Mother Goose. It runs like this:

For every evil under the sun,
There is a remedy or there is none.
If there be one, try and find it,
If there be none, never mind it.

There is a lot of good counsel in those four lines, but few of us heed it. At times we are all miserable victims of worry. Just worrying over trifles that can’t be help ed. Worry certainly can’t help, if nothing else will. Worry never does anything except keep us in a continual state of foolish apprehension. Sometimes the day gets started off wrong. Son wants you to play a game of Chinese checkers with him before he starts to school. You quit clearing the breakfast table, sit down and start a game; all the time thinking that you ought to be about your morning work. He is thoroughly interested in the game. You keep glancing at the clock, worrying for fear he will be late at school. You make a few moves, not making much progress at that, with your mind on dinner planning. You look at the clock again. He has only about eight minutes to get to school. Then you begin the worrying all over again. Will the grocery order you phoned in at 8 o’clock get here in time for the roast to get cooked for dinner? In the middle of your worries you get beaten at checkers and son is off to school. You realize that you have to think fast and keep your mind on the problem on hand if you beat these teen age youngsters at any game. In the course of the morning you break three mixing bowls and the handle off a cup. You dash around and get the dinner on to cook and take a chance at the roast getting done. In the meantime you answer the telephone a half dozen times, and on the last trip back to the kitchen you find that the fire has nearly gone out, and the meat is not cooking at all. A red hot stove complicates matters. You find this out when you smell the roast scorching while you are dusting the living room. By this time the morning has been robbed of all tranquility, and you are harried by the uncertainty of having dinner ready at noon.

But wonder of wonders! Everything worked out alright. The meat was tender, in spite of the slightly scorched taste. The house got cleaned and dusted, or if it hadn’t the world would have moved on just the same. The table is all set and it is still ten minutes to twelve. Those few minutes seem like an age, after all the hurry you have been through, so you sit down to practice a few moves at Chinese checkers. All this happened to me today, including that about the mixing bowls. I remedied the cup handle with some glue. The wreck with the mixing bowls was so disastrous that I decided it could not be remedied with any kind of glue, so I just remembered the Mother Goose rhyme, and threw it all in the waste can. And still I didn’t get anywhere with all that worry.

Reprinted with permission from The Daily Courier. Copyright owned by The Daily Courier.