THE BATTLE OF LIFE

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 123, 22 February 1928, Page 13

THE BATTLE OF LIFE

Sir,—Under the above heading, aud written by an old lady, comes a refreshing interlude in your columns of “The common task, the daily round/'’ It has given many pleasant thoughts to at least one soul who has been plodding along from day to day, idly speculating from time to time on that selfsame question: What is the reason of life? Is it worth while? One might say I am at the halfway house, judging from the given ago of an old lady, so it would be rather interesting to try and write down my half-baked impressions ana cofnpare them with the fullymatured ideals of sixty. Firstly: To be able to fully appreciate the miracles of life, it is essential to be blessed with the only thing in life worth while—good health. To be perfectly practical, it is impossible to see the beauties in life if one is handicapped at the outset with a nagging liver or any similar complaint. Granting that tlwse disabilities can be overcome with common-sense, one is faced again with— Secondly: The wajs and means of earning sufficient money to keep the wolf from the door. Why, after all, shouldn't money independently earned be a private possession to be spent, and not a trust? I think these young things are so verv busy making both ends meet that they haven’t time to Think anything at all about life. And that subconsciously they are storing away boundless energy to meet their struggles, even though they may be. the outcome of their shallow, selfish views on life? . I am still in possession of the faculties to earn independent money, but being married and having three children I don J t even have tho satisfaction of handling the money for which I work far harder now than I did in my independent days. Not that I would have it otherwise, but it has been the pruning of my own life in tho last ten years which has so often made me ■wonder: What is the meaning of life? In my own small opinion, tho tragedy in the lives of the younger people lies in the fact that, having had these years of independent thought and freedom,, we want to commence our married lives where our parents left off, and in tho process of being broken in, as it were, to life. We must be allowed our period of unbelief. "Carry on" should be our watchword—the plodders get there in the end. God apparently must be all around us, as an atmosphere —not a shadowy Person to whom we turn to when things go wrong, but surely He is in the arms of our little children when they hug mother at the end of a trying day or in, as our old lady says, the colour of fice, or the rustling of corn, or at" twilight. We can only carry on—with a blind faith that things will turn out all right, and maybe, when our emotions are burnt out, we shall find we have reached, unconsciously, that de- , lightful period of the dignity of old age, which is an unfailing beacon of light to one who is struggling blindly on. Christina Rossetti sums up the ideals of “thirty-one” as follows: — Does the road wind uphill all the way? Yes! To the very end. Will the day’s journey take the whole day long, From morn to night, my friend? But is there for the night a resting place, A roof for when the slow dark hours begin, May not the darkness hide it from my face? You cannot miss that inn. Shall I meet other wayfarers at night, Those who have gone before, Then must I knock, or call when just in sight, They will not keep you waiting at that door. Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak? Of labour you shall find the sum; Will there be beds for me and all who seek ? Yea, beds for all who come. —I am, etc., E.W.W. February 14.