THE MEANING OF HEALTH 267 



afraid because we run away ; that is at least as true as saying 

 that we run away because we are afraid. You cannot control 

 the palpitation of your heart and the chemical condition of your 

 blood ; you must make your effort in connection with the large 

 muscles of running, for over these you have some control. 



It seems easier to form undesirable habits, but that is because 

 most of us do not know what we want or how to get what we 

 want. To begin with, every child is attracted to everything he 

 sees or hears. A useful lesson to learn early is this : You cannot 

 have everything. If you choose the blue, you must go without 

 the pink. We waste much time making a choice, and then 

 worry because we think we might have preferred the other. 

 There is one secret about a quick decision which many people 

 never learn: the harder it is to make up your mind, the less 

 does it matter, in most cases, which you choose. If it mattered 

 a great deal, you would either recognize the difference or would 

 learn after a few mistakes. With some people, hesitating seems 

 to be a habit which they carry all through life. It is childish, 

 to chng to the desire to eat your cake and keep it too. Every 

 choice means a rejection, a giving up, as well as an acceptance 

 or taking ; we cannot have one without the other. This means, 

 in the long run, learning how to make the most of what we do 

 get day by day instead of repining over what we might have had. 

 Sometimes the choice is not so simple as that between two kinds 

 of amusements ; we feel strong desires to act in two ways that 

 cannot be harmonized and that are equally pressing. It may be 

 the desire to buy something very tempting and the desire to 

 save for something in the future— candy now and a tennis 

 racket later, or a bicycle now and going to college later. It may 

 be a decision involving real sacrifice — between continuing in 

 school and going to work to help the family, or between wearing 

 last year's clothes to help some sick person and looking stylish 

 to make a hit with certain persons. In such cases, too, we soon 

 get a habit — some of us will nearly always choose immediate 

 satisfaction, and others will nearly always choose the satisfac- 

 tion of delaying for the greater object ; some people never 



