Presley sacro-iliac, what the neigh bors will think, catching trains, planes, gophers and cold, did you for get to unplug the iron and/or turn off the lawn sprinkler and/or set the alarm clock? On the other hand, you may be the type who goes to the other ex treme and worries about Ultimate Things. This is worrying at its most imaginative and it is also very un selfish. The trick here is worrying about things far removed from your own immediate responsibilities and obligations. Worrying, p e r h a p s , about the mistakes o f history or the Leaning Tower o f Pisa and whether Mars will collide with Earth the next time around — and best of all, worry about the Cobalt Bomb. This latter is especially dandy because it enables you to become a peer o f worriers, the pessimist who’s lost faith in human ity and who isn’t quite sure God Himself is up to snuff on these problems. The following rules s h ou l d be memorized and then put into prac tice if you are serious about riding your worrying hobby till it throws you: 1. Worry must be gratuitous. Nev er worry about a concrete problem, especially if there’s something you can do to eliminate it if you stopped worrying about it and started doing something about it instead. 2. Be careful about doing nothing constructive. A w o m a n I know slipped up here. One visit to her family doctor was so reassuring that it undid all she’d accomplished dur ing several months of hard-working worry. 3. Remember that in worrying practice makes perfect. The more you worry, the more you’ll find to worry about. h. Don’t let anything interfere with worrying. One of the most dan gerous practices for the worrier is to dump all his problems on the blessed Christ’s doorstep. Such action can only result in great serenity and peace of mind despite all sorts of otherwise favorable external circum stances. 5. Every morning, just to keep your state of mind anxious and un easy, face the dreary waking hours with all the ennui you can muster. Then repeat the motto of the Happy Worriers everywhere: “Alackaday keeps happiness away!” or “A worry a day, keeps happiness away!”
WORRYING
F or a n a b s o r b in g hobby in which you can become a do-it-your self expert practically over sleepless night, why not try Worrying? Worrying is an ideal hobby be cause it’s something you can do be cause you want to and not because you have to. There’s no capital out lay and you can worry anywhere any time. Worrying can really take your mind off important things. It affords all the thrill o f being shipwrecked in shark-infested wa ters, yet you need never get your feet wet. In the privacy o f your own home, you can become just as jittery about elephantiasis, sleeping sick ness and beri-beri as though you were actually on safari. Once you get the knack of worry ing, you can make your fondest nightmares seem true. A final advantage, and one no oth er hobby can equal, is that there are such an infinite number o f choice things to worry about that you can select your own poison — or a com bination o f several — to suit your own tastes and temperament. One o f the most popular forms of Worrying is about money. Most peo ple unwittingly worry about not hav ing enough. This type o f worrying is highly overrated because sometimes there are grounds fo r constructive anxiety and the true aficionado never worries to a purpose. Furthermore in worrying about not having enough money, you may remember that you’ve never missed a meal or been thrown out on the street yet, and you may even make the fatal mis take o f believing that God will sup
ply all your needs in due time. By far the superior way to worry about money is to have a pile to start with. Then you can worry in two direc tions at once — about getting more and about losing what you have. Another very popular form of worrying and one that has many satisfactions is Diseases. A raise or an unexpected windfall can’t spoil Diseases. You can quickly check your adaptability to Disease Worrying by giving yourself the following simple test: Read an article on medicine in any popular magazine. If, h a l f w a y through the article, you find your self coming down with the selfsame dizzy spells and galloping spots be fore the eyes, you have every justifi cation for investing $1.98 plus tax in a Home Medical Encyclopedia. Then, whenever you want to worry, you have merely to take your H.M.E. down from your library shelf, close your eyes, open the volume at ranr dom and enjoy the particular form of poor health your eye lights on when you open same. Many worriers about diseases live long enough to have everything from Allergies to Zymotics. (A tip — skip phthisis. Many people do. It’s too hard to pro nounce.) If you find you cannot give the time you’d like to Worrying, you can worry weekends or even during tele vision commercials or while waiting for traffic to change. There are many pleasant little nibblers to afford worry material. Receding hairlines are provocative, and, o f course, the
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THE KING'S BUSINESS
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