The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

      

NEW YORK, Friday—A book has just been revised by its author, Marie Beynon Ray, and is being brought out in this revised edition by the Bobbs Merrill Company. The title is arresting: "How Never To Be Tired."

There are certainly many people who would like to discover how this can be accomplished. Mrs. Ray says that she has looked upon her book as "a laboratory experiment seeking to discover whether merely by reading a book people could be cured of their fatigue." Judging from the testimonials which have come in, a great many people have been helped by reading this book.

I liked one little sentence in Chapter 12 entitled "Behave Yourself." The sentence reads "The truth is that the sense of being alive is what man craves. He would rather be dangerously alive than safely dead."

One of the practical things that is said in the book has been said hundreds of times, "We in the United States overeat," but it is also emphasized that we should plan to live a balanced life—air, exercise, food and rest all are a part of a balanced life, just as work and recreation are a part of good living.

There is recognition in the book, too, of the need for a certain kind of energy. In a chapter which is devoted to this particular point the author says: "There is no denying that many of these people are gifted beyond the ordinary. Equally there is no denying that often they are no more gifted than others who have achieved little or nothing. Nor is there any denying that many of those who have accomplished much are not gifted at all, but are quite ordinary people whose mediocre capacities have been magnified many times by their incalculable energy.... Some of them undoubtedly have special gifts but all of them have the ability to get things done.

"They have this one thing and little, if anything, else in common. Even the quality of their energy differs—but there can be no doubt that what has put them where they are is ceaseless activity of some kind, perpetual motion of mind or body, or both. Study them, see if the one thing common to them all, strong or fragile, healthy or sick, old or young, male or female, is not their restless, driving, never-ceasing energy."

The idea seems to be that you must act. If you just sit down and do nothing you become mentally and physically loggy, and that is not a healthy situation!

The American Association for the United Nations held meetings last Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning with representatives from more than sixty non-governmental organizations. On Sunday afternoon, a meeting was held in the Starlight Roof at the Waldorf Astoria in honor of the members of the U.S. Delegation to the General Assembly of the U.N. This meeting is an annual event and I think it is a great opportunity to meet our representatives who are to deal so closely, during the next few weeks, with the representatives from fifty-nine other countries.

E.R.

(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1954, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, September 25, 1954

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
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Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

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Transcription created from a photocopy of a UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
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