WHY PEOPLE BECOME CYNICS.

Hokitika Guardian, 27 August 1927, Page 4

WHY PEOPLE BECOME CYNICS.

(By Jolm Blunt in Daily Mail.) We. are told that hope springs eternal in the human breast but all the same L have constantly noticed that people whose hopes have been frustrated become extremely cynical and, irom expecting great deal out of Lie. cease to expect anything at all. But surely that is the result of putting all one’s eggs in one basket and of regarding hope a-s a purely personal thing and not as a philosophy of existeme. To hope only in an egotistic way leads almost inevitaby to disappointment, hut to keep the spirit of hope about one as part of the air one breathes brings to a man or woman a kind of satisfaction that no disaster can utterly overwhelm.

MV Baldwin lias been saying recently that he wakes up every morning with a new hope, and that .seems to me a really sound attitude. For if, as so raativ people do, we- concentrate all out powers of hope upon one subject, until it becomes tho whole centre oi our being then wo are only too likely to lcaiii the bitterness of disillusionment. LIFE WORTH FIX TRIALS.

It is from the ranks oi one-, into optimists that the .pessimists come; it is far from those who once luid high and concentrated liojio that the cynics are made. And this is natural enough. To licgin with, few things ever come up to expectation when. at. Inst, we do achieve our aims; and. secondly, wo are frequently “let. down” by the people wo care for most, and can easily become embittered if we have not a philisophv of hope instead of merely one great |KT.sonnl hope. The wise mail’s hope is based, among other tilings, upon toe fact that life is worth all its trials and its sorrows. And that, nerhans. is why one so often finds cheerfulness among those who, one would imagine, would he least cheerful— blind people,, invalids, persons who have known, deep grief or have undergone severe reverses of fortune. Hope is the compensating factor of their lives; it stands, like a sentinal. between, them and desperation. FORM OF SELFISHNESS. Mb' all hope—and quite rightly—that, life is going to ho good to us and i that our dreams will come true. But what is that hope worth if it deserts us in our hour of need, if it goes sour when it ought lo remain sweet ? Noth- i ing at all. The kind of hope that I can’t withstand disappointment is a form of selfishness. In the long run it is more likely to bring unhappiness than happiness, more likely to create unrest than peace.