We can use the
will to endure, to wait, to suspend a hasty judgment; and impulse is
the thing which menaces our serenity most of all. The will indeed seems
to be like a little weight which we can throw into either scale. If we
have no doubt how we ought to act, we can use the will to enforce our
judgment, whether it is a question of acting or of abstaining; if we
are in doubt how to act, we can use our will to enforce a wise delay.

The truth then about the will is that it is a force which we cannot
measure, and that it is as unreasonable to say that it does not exist
as to say that it is unlimited. It is foolish to describe it as free;
it is no more free than a prisoner in a cell is free; but yet he has a
certain power to move about within his cell, and to choose among
possible employments.

Anyone who will deliberately test his will, will find that it is
stronger than he suspects; what often weakens our use of it is that we
are so apt to look beyond the immediate difficulty into a long
perspective of imagined obstacles, and to say within ourselves, "Yes, I
may perhaps achieve this immediate step, but I cannot take step after
step--my courage will fail!" Yet if one does make the immediate effort,
it is common to find the whole range of obstacles modified by the
single act; and thus the first step towards the attainment of serenity
of life is to practise cutting off the vista of possible contingencies
from our view, and to create a habit of dealing with a case as it
occurs.

I am often tempted myself to send my anxious mind far ahead in vague
dismay; at the beginning of a week crammed with various engagements,
numerous tasks, constant labour, little businesses, many of them with
their own attendant anxiety, it is easy to say that there is no time to
do anything that one wants to do, and to feel that the matters
themselves will be handled amiss and bungled. But if one can only keep
the mind off, or distract it by work, or beguile it by a book, a walk,
a talk, how easily the thread spins off the reel, how quietly one comes
to harbour on the Saturday evening, with everything done and finished!

Again, I am personally much disposed to dread the opposition and the
displeasure of colleagues, and to shrink nervously from anything which
involves dealing with a number of people. I ought to have found out
before now how futile such dread is; other people forget their vexation
and even grow ashamed of it, much as one does one