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CHAPTER 4:

Burden-Dropping

“This to me is life;
That if life be a burden, I will join
To make it but the burden of a song.”
— Bailey.

“Have you heard that it was good to gain the day?
I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same
spirit in which they are won.”
— Walt Whitman.

We hear and read much about burden-bearing, but of the better way of burden-dropping very
little is heard or known. Yet why should you go about with an oppressive weight at your heart
when you might relieve yourself of it and move amongst your fellows heart-free and cheerful? No
man carries a load upon his back except to necessarily transfer something from one place to
another; he does not saddle his shoulders with a perpetual burden, and then regard himself as a
martyr for his pains; and why should you impose upon your mind a useless burden, and then add
to its weight the miseries of self-condolence and self-pity? Why not abandon both your load and
your misery, and thus add to the gladness of the world by first making yourself glad? No reason
can justify, and no logic support, the ceaseless carrying of a grievous load. As in things material a
load is only undertaken as a necessary means of transference, and is never a source of sorrow, so
in things spiritual a burden should only be taken up as a means towards some good and necessary
end, which, when attained, the burden is put aside; and the carrying of such a burden, far from

being a source of grief would be a cause for rejoicing.
We say that bodily mortifications which some religious ascetics inflict upon themselves are
unnecessary and vain; and are the mental mortifications which so many people inflict upon
themselves less unnecessary and vain?
Where is the burden which should cause unhappiness or sorrow? It does not exist. If a thing is
to be done let it be done cheerfully, and not with inward groanings and lamentations. It is of the
highest wisdom to embrace necessity as a friend and guide. It is of the greatest folly to scowl upon
necessity as an enemy, and to wish or try to overcome or avoid her. We meet our own at every
turn, and duties only become oppressive loads when we refuse to recognize and embrace them. He
who does any necessary thing in a niggardly and complaining spirit, hunting the while after
unnecessary pleasures, lashes himself with the scorpions of misery and disappointment, and
imposes upon himself a doubly-weighted burden of weariness and unrest under which he
incessantly groans.
“Wake thou, O self, to better things;
To yonder heights uplift thy wings;