Askov American. [volume] (Askov, Pine County, Minn.) 1914-current, 1927-01-27
ON YOUR MIND, OR in 1T
dearborn independently

Galsworthy has line in The Silver
Spoon which describes a statesman in
office as having much on his mind
but practically nothing in it. This
description will arrest the attention
of busy people everywhere, for the
excess of busy-ness is one of the cur
ses of modern life. The average busy
mind is not a pOwer-house or creative
force, but relay station through
which things merely pass.
Originating nothing and retaining
little, the bulk of our mental activity
resembles nothing more than brick
passing.
Men of large affairs frequently re-
fleet on this tendency in business life.
Rarely do the administrative and Gre
ative minds come together in the
same individual, because the admin
istrative tends to deprive the creative
of its nourishment. Suffocation in the
incidental is the surest way to miss
the fundamental.
The man who confronts the posi-
bility of having a great deal on his
mind can make no better preparation
for it than by having great deal in
his mind. The possession of a dur
able foundation of lasting things keeps
the mind from being Jared to pieces
by the incessant traffic of passing
things. AS long as the mind must
serve in some degree as traffic high
way, it should be we'll ballasted.
There is private as we'll as public
mischief in the condition which Calls
worthy so aptly describes. The pri-
vate mischief is that men come pres
emily to think of busy-ness as work.
It may be mere motion, fuss, fever.
1t is no less wearing than work, per-
haps it is more so, but it is not pro-
ductive. The energy expended is not
paid for in results. Women who run
about to clubs and other social af-
fairs, which are camouflaged under
pretense of study or reform or service
find themselves with so much on their
minds that they fret under the grow
ing completely of life; they begin to
feel that they have been drawn into
the circle of the worlds important
affairs; a sense of strain and haste
occurs; but at the end of the season
they can look back at nothing but
a blur of busy, useless WEAKNESS. Men
become enmeshed in the same net.
The obvious cure for this unhappy
state of affairs is rigorous separa-
ton of the merely busy from the
really needful and fruitful. 1t would
reduce the count of dominating trivi-
alities.
The public mischief is obvious.
Mem who have only much on and
little in>-their minds inevitably be-
come the agents of those who have
something in their minds. The great
danger of the statesman is not in
moral weakness but intellectual in
sufficiency; policy" of some sort is
necessity; if he cannot provide one
for himself, he must take one ready
made.
And there are always plenty of in
terests hanging about, many of them
honest interests but none the less dan
gerous, ready to supply him with a
program or a policy. Statesmen who
carry the heavy routine burden of Of
flee, confess their inability to give
their minds to anything; they must
largely depend on the judgement of
others; the weighty work of legisla-
tion is often determined by men never
selected for it; and the reason is that
men in office have so many things on
their mind that they have practically
nothing in their mind.
Yet, when the public has choice be-
tween poppy feverish, run-around
-in-a-circle man with heaps of things
on his mind, and a calm, quiet, self
possessed, thoughtful, judicial man
with much in his mind, it selects the
poppy man. That does not spell
doom, of course, for after his selec-
ton the poppy" man is needful for
someone to use him by supplying him
with the intellectual material which
| he can USE And that is the thought
full mans opportunity.