The proper course clearly is to substitute acts which promise to be
interesting for acts which have proved themselves to produce nothing
but tedium, and to carry out the change with brains, in a business
spirit. And the first essential is to recognize that something has
definitely to go by the board.
He protests:
"But I do only the usual things--what everybody else does! And then
it's time to go to bed."
The case, however, is his case, not everybody else's case. Why should
he submit to everlasting boredom for the mere sake of acting like
everybody else?
He continues in the same strain:
"But you are asking me to change my whole life--at my age!"
Nothing of the sort! I am only suggesting that he should begin to
live.
And then finally he cries:
"It's too drastic. I haven't the pluck!"
Now we are coming to the real point.
IV
The machinery of his volition, in all directions save one, has been
clogged, through persistent neglect, due to over-specialization. His
mind needs to be cleared, and it can be cleared--it will clear
itself--if regular periods of repose are enforced upon it. As things
are, it practically never gets a holiday from business. I do not mean
that the plain man is always thinking about his business; but I mean
that he is always liable to think about his business, that his
business is always present in his mind, even if dormant there, and
that at every opportunity, if the mind happens to be inactive, it sits
up querulously and insists on attention.
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