THE DAILY RUT

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 10 December 1927, Page 9

THE DAILY RUT

And the Wov Out Guidance From Literature I crossed a moor with a name of its own, And a certin use in the world, no doubt, But a handsbreadth of it shines alone, 'Mid the blank miles round about; For there I picked up on the heather, And there I put inside my breast A moulted feather—art eagle's feather Well, I forget the rest. —R. Browning. Best trust the happy moments .... Hours that make us happy make us wise. —J. Masefield.

■ 1 I' is all very well for the teachers of morality and religion to declaim that “the daily round and the common task’’ should “furnish all we ought to ask.” We are all, nevertheless, sufficiently akin to Oliver Twist to keep on asking for more, and a great deal more, at that. There is perhaps no one engaged in any department of the world’s work who does not periodically chafe and fret over the irksome and dull duties of his lot, and indeed there is very little to be said for the man who can complacently accept as his dwell-ing-place and who can contentedly settle down in—a rut. A rut, by the constant marching to and fro of monotonously busy feet, may deepen more and more until it becomes a living grave, or deep trench over the parapets of which nothing can be seen cf the living, breathing wori*d of men and women. Everyone, in the plain and expreslanguage of the man in the street, gets fed-up at times with his own job. Its daily repetitions of similar problems, its deadly routine, its ruthless demands upon his energies and his time, ail make for certain reactions on the par! of the individual. It may not be a waste of the reader’s time to glance at a few of these typical reactions to the monotonous regularity of daily tasks. THE STOICAL ATTITUDE. There are those who go forward to each day’s work in an attitude of determined resignation; willing to go through with it; made up in their :.;,nds to stick it out for one more day. ■ hey learned their philosophy of hie from Henley— Out of the night that covers me Black as the pit from Pole to Pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody but‘unbowed. It matters now how straight the gate; How charged with punishment the scroll; 1 am the master of my fate, I am the Captain of my soul. That is to say, you can go through the wearisome duties that arise from day to day in a defiant mood of independence, pushing things through your hands as though to say, as each task is laid aside, “There. That’s that.” This attitude of mind means, of course, that you heart is not in your daily job, which is another way of saying that you have missed your avocation. The bloody head unbowed may represent a fine independence of spirit, but mighty little happiness. THE CARE-FREE VIEW. An alternative is to amble along in an easy, thoughtless way, taking each day and each task as it comes, and seeking to eke out in other and pleasanter ways the pleasures denied by daily work. Robert Burns, the Scottish poet, in his mad moods of abandon, is the patron saint of the “rantin’ rovers” who would fain escape fro mthe dullness of life under a covering of light-hearted banter, or in the folds of a philosophy of “Let-us-eat-drink-and-be-merry-for-to-morrow - we - die.” Says Burns— For me, an aim I never fash. I rhyme for fun. I’ll wander on wi’ tentless heed, how never-halting moments speed, Till Death shall snap the brittle thread, Then, all unknown, I’ll lay me wi’ the inglorious dead, Forgot and gone. But why o’ death begin a tale? Just now, we’re living, sound and hale. Then, top and main-top crowd the sail, Heave care owerside, And, large before enjoyment's gale, Let’s tak’ the tide.

The same poet, however, had many ? deeper moods than this, and found, as g all of us must find, that $ an honest facing up to the everyday problems cf our lives, and an honest dealing with them, is essential for the kind of happiness that X lasts. THE BEST WAY. It is surely better to “trust the 0 happy moments” as Masefield says, or o to grasp eagerly to our breasts the high thoughts that come to us “out of ? the blue” even m the midst of the work X . of an ordinary day. For not even the most monotonously employed is the entire victim of circumstance, and there can be few in these days who cannot find a pearl in the rough oyster-shell of | the dismal task. o i If we may quote Browning again, we ? would point to his magnificent lines, | which -may be taken as applying to the | ordinary man going up to his ordinary X work prepared to find worth and value | m it- ? Are there not two points in the ad- I venture of the diver, 9 One when, a beggar, he prepares to & plunge, | One when, a prince, he rises with his X pearl? "Yes,” as Carlyle said, “here in this | | poor, miserable, despicable Actual, here ’ or nowhere is your ideal. It is certain | I that keen search may bring to ligin J many of tin: grandeurs and nobilities ch X daily living -and that there are few | enjoyments to be compared for a - moment with the joy of an ordinary g day’s work honestly done. Wordsworth gave us the contrast, as | it has never been given otherwise, in ? his famous lines. In “Peter Bell,” he | says, speaking of that most eminently I blind individual— A primrose by the river’s brim g A yellow primrose was, to him—and | it was nothing more And of himself, in his high moments, he says— To me the meanest flower that blows, fl can give Thoughts that do often he too deep A for tears. The difference between the two I points of view is a difference of being ? able to see through the poor, hampered | actual to the living glory of the ideal. I It is the difference between letting the X odd eagle-feathers (which do flutter to | the ground even on the ordinary days o of dismal drudgery) fall unheeded, or 9 be caught up and "put mside the J breast.” A f There is no day, however dull, when it does not happen that something floats into the mind “out of the blue”—something that may be caught and held, even sub- a consciously. ?

In a railway compartment on a blazing day in summer, it is possible not to notice the lights under the roof, but when, with a rattle and a roar, the train plunges into the tunnel, the pale and disregarded lights became the only means by which you see. So it is that by storing up that “chorus ending from Euripides”—that cheery greeting from a friend—that hint of “something far more deeply interfused” than ledgers, account books and bad debts—you may, even out of the store of each day’s givings ,have light by which to see your way in the day of darkness. And if that happens to you because of good impulses caught from elsewhere, make it a duty and a pleasure of your own to take George MacDonald’s advice—“lnstead of a gem or even a flower, cast the gift of a lovely thought into the heart of a friend.” For, that, to your friend, may come back one day like an eagle’s feather out of the sky, a reminder in the midst of a barren moorland waste, of illimitable spaces of human kind ness, and be picked up on the bare hillside of disappointment as a token of encouragement and renewed endeavour.