Article October 12, 1981 Issue

Commuting the self-sentence

BEATRICE S. PETERSON

A frazzled homemaker, a burdened business executive, a harried schoolteacher, a depleted college student, might ruminate, "I have a right to feel exhausted!"

Who says so? It is not other people and human conditions but the false concept of man calling itself "I" that is the real perpetrator of exhaustion. If you and I fall for this argument, we have unwittingly joined the self-sentencers.

Once when I was recuperating from a period of chronic exhaustion, this statement by Mrs. Eddy in Science and Health completely undercut all my previous rationalizing: "Unwittingly you sentence yourself to suffer. The understanding of this will enable you to commute this self-sentence, and meet every circumstance with truth."^{Science and Health, p. 378.}