Monotony brings fatigue, because there is a shutting out of the excitement that acts as an antidote to fatigue-feeling. A man who works without fatigue six days a week is tired all day Sunday and longs for Monday. The modern housewife,[1] with her four walls and the unending, uninteresting tasks, is worn out, and her fatigue reaction is the greater the more her previous life has been exciting and varied. Fatigue often enough is present not because of the work done but because the STIMULUS TO WORK HAS DISAPPEARED. Monotony is an enemy of character. Variety, in its normal aspect, is not only the spice of life; it is a great need.
Stabilization of purpose and work are necessary, but a standardization that stamps out the excitement of variety is a deadly blow to human happiness.
[1] See my book "The Nervous Housewife!"
Under monotony certain types of personalities develop an intense inner life, which may be pathological, or it may be exceedingly fruitful of productive thought.
Some build up a delusional thought and feeling. For delusion merely means uncorrected thought and belief, and we can only correct by contact and collision. The whole outer world may vanish or become hostile and true mental disease develop. Perhaps it is more nearly correct to say that minds predisposed to mental disease find in monotony a circumstance favoring disease.
On the other hand, a vigorous mind shut out from outer stimuli[1] finds in this circumstance the time to develop leisurely, finds a freedom from distraction that leads to clear views of life and a proper expression. A periodic retirement from the busy, too-busy world is necessary for the thinker that he may digest his material, that he may strip away unessential beliefs, that he may find what it is he really needs, strives for and ought to have.
[1] Perhaps this is why real genius does not flourish in our crowded, over-busy days, despite the great amount of talent.
4. Here we come to another corollary of the need for excitement, the need of relaxation. At any rate, satisfaction and pleasure need periods of hunger in order to be felt. In the story of Buddha he is represented as being shielded from all sorrow and pain, living a life filled with pleasure and excitement, yet he sought out pain. So excitement, if too long continued--or rather if a situation that produces excitement of a pleasurable kind be too long endured--will result in boredom. "Things get to be the same," whether it be the excitement of love, the city, sports or what not. This is a basic law of all pleasures. In order that life may have zest, that excitement may be easily and pleasurably evoked and by normal means, we need relaxation, periods free from excitement, or we must pass on to a costly chase for excitement that brings breakdown of the character.
5. If the seeking of excitement, as such, is one of the prime pleasures of life, organized excitement in the form of interest is the directing and guiding principle of activity. At the outset of life interest is in the main involuntary and is aroused by the sights, sounds and happenings of the outer world. As time goes on, as the organism develops, as memories of past experiences become active, as peculiarities of personality develop, and as instincts reach activity, interest commences to take definite direction, to become canalized, so to speak. In fact, the development of interest is from the diffuse involuntary form of early childhood to a specialization, a condensation into definite voluntary channels. This development goes on unevenly, and is a very variable feature in the lives of all of us. Great ability expresses itself in a sustained interest; a narrow character is one with overdeformed, too narrow interest; failure is often the retention of the childish character of diffuse, involuntary interest. And the capacity to sustain interest depends not only on the special strength of the various abilities of the individual, but remarkably on his energy and health. Sustained "voluntary" interest is far more fatiguing than involuntary interest, and where fatigue is already present it becomes difficult and perhaps impossible. Thus after much work, whether physical or mental, during and after illness--especially in influenza, in neurasthenic states generally, or where there is an inner conflict--interest in its adult form is at a low ebb.
There are two main directions which interest may take, because there are two worlds in which we live. There is the inner world of our feelings, our thoughts, our desires and our struggles,[1]--and there is the outer world, with its people, its things, its hostilities, its friendships, its problems and facts, its attractions and repulsions. Man divides his interest between the two worlds, for in both of them are the values of existence.
