Article January 6, 1973 Issue

What the Waiter Learned

CHARLES EDWARD LANGTON

How often has the pressure of your job or of duties in the home or the necessity to be pleasant to strangers left you feeling frustrated, perhaps irritated or just plain uptight? Can we deal with such situations in a way that will establish harmony in our daily lives? It can be done. Perhaps the experience of a college student who has worked part time as a waiter in an ice-cream parlor will serve to illustrate how.

One evening when the ice-cream parlor was especially busy, the waiter found that he was rushing about a great deal and becoming tense and harried as a result of having to serve so many patrons. In particular, a party of twelve at one table were anxious to be served quickly, and theirs was an unusually large order. He didn't see how he could keep up the rather frantic pace all evening—and that party table was a special challenge!

He was a student of Christian Science, however, and knew that it had helped him with his academic work and healed him of illness. He was sure it could help him now. But how? At that moment, when he felt most pressured, two lines from one of Mrs. Eddy's hymns filled his receptive thought:

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