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Therefore, if we are wise, instead of rebelling against pain, we should accept it gratefully as the helper and the possible preserver of our lives, and we should accept the wakefulness quietly as the sign of something that needs correction, or else as an opportunity for quiet thought and reflection.

When we have found what is wrong, and do our best to correct it, not only is the attention drawn from the pain to the remedy, but the effort to relieve it lessens the effect of the suffering.[5]

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Where care lodges, sleep will never lie.

Shakespeare.

We all know the blessing of sleep, but it is hard to show the sufferer that wakefulness is useful.

Wakefulness always has some cause, and, if we truly wish to be cured of it, it will be well to seek the cause rather than to grumble at the wakefulness itself. It is not enough to know what is the matter, we must find out why it is the matter. To find the cause of any condition simplifies matters; it makes the course we must follow clearer. If the cause can be removed, we should bend all our energies to removing it; to paraphrase Stephen Pearl Andrews’ saying—we are not to be subject to circumstances, but rather to make ourselves center-stances. But, if the matter be something over which we have no control, there are two courses open to us: the first is to accept the condition and adapt ourselves to it; the second is to devise some method by which we may gain control over it.