I'M LETTING MYSELF GO

HOW TO RELAX—IN A FEW UNEASY LESSONS

- BY Corey Ford

Who says I'm tense? I'm perfectly calm, I tell you. I'm as cool as a—cubercum. I mean a cucumber. I can lift a cup of coffee without spilling it, provided I hold on to my wrist with the other hand, and when I go to bed I sleep like a top. (Sometimes I spin all night.) I've been reading a book on how to relax, and I'm completely cucumbered—I mean cured. It's this do-it-yourself fad that's sweeping the country these days. We're all wound up tight, the doctors warn. The accelerated pace of modern living and the effects of the war (all those sergeants yelling “Tension!”) are causing people's nerves to snap like garters.

The way to get hold of yourself is to let yourself go. Don't worry about being worried. Be loose. The trouble is that the looser I try to be, the tighter I get. I've taken all the doctors' cures to give me peace of mind, and now I'd like to give them a piece of my own. It isn't the tension that makes people tense. It's this effort to relax that's tying us all in knots.

My friends got me started. Not that I really had anything to be alarmed about, they assured me. It was just that several of my classmates had keeled over recently without warning and, after all, a person my age shouldn't push too hard. I ought to have a few good years left in me yet, if I was careful. “Take it easy,” they suggested. “Stop thinking about your work, or you'll get ulcers.”

So I stopped thinking about my work and started thinking about ulcers instead. The more I thought, the more I became aware of certain little symptoms I'd never noticed before. There was a fluttering sensation in the pit of my stomach, for instance, and my pulse sounded funny. The following morning I nicked myself while shaving. My friends couldn't have been more pleased if I'd cut my throat. "Better take a day off," they advised. "Stay home and read the papers, and don't even answer the phone. Put everything out of your mind."