How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day
Page: 11

insist on this.

If you imagine that you will be able to achieve your ideal by ingeniously
planning out a time-table with a pen on a piece of paper, you had better
give up hope at once. If you are not prepared for discouragements and
disillusions; if you will not be content with a small result for a big effort,
then do not begin. Lie down again and resume the uneasy doze which
you call your existence.

It is very sad, is it not, very depressing and sombre? And yet I think it
is rather fine, too, this necessity for the tense bracing of the will before
anything worth doing can be done. I rather like it myself. I feel it to be
the chief thing that differentiates me from the cat by the fire.

"Well," you say, "assume that I am braced for the battle. Assume that
I have carefully weighed and comprehended your ponderous remarks;
how do I begin?" Dear sir, you simply begin. There is no magic method
of beginning. If a man standing on the edge of a swimming-bath and
wanting to jump into the cold water should ask you, "How do I begin to
jump?" you would merely reply, "Just jump. Take hold of your nerves,
and jump."

As I have previously said, the chief beauty about the constant supply of
time is that you cannot waste it in advance. The next year, the next day,
the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoilt, as if you
had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in all your career. Which
fact is very gratifying and reassuring. You can turn over a new leaf every
hour if you choose. Therefore no object is served in waiting till next week,
or even until to-morrow. You may fancy that the water will be warmer next
week. It won't. It will be colder.

But before you begin, let me murmur a few words of warning in your private
ear.


Let me principally warn you against your own ardour. Ardour in well-doing
is a misleading and a treacherous thing. It cries out loudly for employment;
you can't satisfy it at first; it wants more and more; it is eager to move
mountains and divert the course of rivers. It isn't content till it perspires.
And then, too often, when it feels the perspiration on its brow, it wearies