ART OF LIVING-ROUTINE

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4596, 3 September 1923, Page 3

ART OF LIVING-ROUTINE

(By

Dr. Frank Crane).

One of the secreta pf contentment is the art; of making routine agreeable. Nine-tenths of the day’s doings are made up of routine. They run like Mark Twain’s diary: “Got up, washed, went to bed.” Every day you must do these three duties; besides, there are eating, dressing, and undressing, the same floors to sweep, children to look after, letters to answer, bird to feed, and cat.- to put out. Now, seeing you have to do this, that there is no escaping it, and that it constitutes the major part of your existence, wouldn’t it be a good plan to arrange your inevitables so as to make them pleasant ? And if so be that your inevitables are hateful,, and you cannot bring yourself to like your daily round, whether washing dishes or selling gloves, or keeping books, if your kind of routine is what just naturally goes against your stomach, wouldn’t it be a good idea to change yourself,, so that you would like what you now loathe ? .It can be done, you know. It is hard, even to suggest it is a bit insulting ; but still it can be done. Just tp take oneself in one’s two hands, and say, with a desperate Desmond hiss, “ I’ve got to do it—for a time, anyway—and by the Great Horn Spoon I’ll make myself do it,” will be an interesting experiment, even if you dont’ succeed. For though a man be blessed who gets what he likes, thrice blessed is the man who likes what, he gets. Really, my friend, if you will a uit ' fretting at your routine, and go on .tinkering at your own thoughts, and try to get them adjusted to the unavoidable, you will be astonished at the amount of comfort you can create for yourself. If you’re caged it does no good co flutter against the bars ; better hop up on the perch and sing; you’ll live longer. But how ? Well, use your imagination. Try to idealise the commonplace, paint it with what poetry you can, decorate i: —just as a woman compelled to live in a shanty cleans it and puts flower pots in the window. And sing. That’s what song is for —to lighten labour. If you have to do the washing, keep time on your washboard as you rub to a song for in;tance— Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag, And smile, smile, smile. TJearn also to laugh. 1 mean,, to laugh when you want to cry. Find the funny side of things. Everything has one. And it’s a great trick tp be able .to laugh when everybody expects you to whine. It’s a fine defence of fate. It is the soul’s triumph. Anybody can laugh at what is funny, but the laughter that fills the soul as with wine is laughter at things that are desperate. The really happy people in this world, don’t forget, are they that like their routine,, and enjoy doing wha. they must do; and the bored and the world-weary people are those that see amusement only in what is novel. Fools appreciate the unusual; wise folk the usual.