THE BALANCE OF THINGS

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4881, 23 September 1925, Page 1

THE BALANCE OF THINGS

SQUARING HUMAN LIFE. THE NEVER-ENDING TASK. “You are only half of yourself. The other half is what you make of yourself. your personal significance in things, the ego reflected as your contribution towards the general hurlyburly,” writes Mr A., W. Thomson, with a fine touch of humour and insight, in “Chambers’ Journal.” "Balancing each of these halves with the other purges life of the colourless outlook of its own non-stop march to the grave. In fact, life becomes quite rosy. It becomes an everlasting tinkering with something that looks like a pair of (scales. ‘You balance an ounce of peisonality by an ounce of something accomplished, an obligation tp humanity by a cash receipt, a step backward by two forward, to-day, to-mor-row, and the day after. “The problem of making and remaking, shaping and reshaping, .that which you call your destiny, is the most delightful occupation between your first and seventieth birthdays. You are forever loading or unloading the scales. And the hardworked pans no sooner balance than you set put to rebalance, in improvement, ais you hope.

“You cannot have both the penny and the toffee. Being human, you will not give something' for nothing, and wild horses will not prevent you from taking the toffee. But if you grasp both pans you commit a sin against society and are clapped into prison. “iOn the other hand, if you decline to do any balancing.because you want, to tsick to pyur penny, you are doing no more trade, or whatever; may be your activity. If everyone stops dead in this fashion the world stops going, like a clock that has run down. “What you must do is to balance and rebalance the scales a hundred times a day to suit a hundred exigencies, and again at night to suit the fellows, who have tilted against you. This means that you keep- faith with both nature and .humanity.

“You will perceive that this bag of pennies, toffee, morality, and jingling scales comprise the stuff of which life is compounded. As things naturally cannot stand still, but must ever go forward or backward, you really cannot cease dabbling with those scales. In three score and ten years' you will have millions of balances to adjust and readjust.

“But on one point you, must be inflexible, to make sure the balance is dead true after, each weighing, and before you start the next When.folk cannot or will not attend to this point they are. commonly described as having bees in their bonnets; or even more'unsavoury epithets are applied. ,

"That the . point is often, forgotten is deplorable, but this is, an imperfect world. In point of fact, quite a number of sound people at times find difficulty in getting the old scales ,tb work properly.

“If you cannot acquire the knack of balancing things you are drifting towards becoming a public nuisance, or else'towards the workhouse. The world is a confused medley of tit for tats, eyes for eyes, teeth for teeth, measure for measure, and pay and take (the parable of the penny and the toffee). “Nothing stands without a prop. Everything has its value or counterpoise. You would think that the (scales must be somewhat the worse for wear. Every moment of your life' you must face the music, the other pan of the balance. There is no escape ; it will get at you to restore the poise sooner or. later, and somehow or other. The old scales garishly expose the tricksiiows of life. Truly the world is. like an. algebraical equation. Turn it how you will, side to side, top tb bottom, it must come to some balance.

“If you sit down with a bundle of foolscap 'and attempt to make out a list of. the paradoxes and tit-for-tats that make up so much that is problematical in your own life you are almost certain to conclude that the gods have ill-favoured you. With the fatuity of mankind you will probably blame everyone but yourself for the way things have panned out. “You will frequently adopt the attitude of the fox towards the grapes to cover yourself. Yet you will perceive one great-and unexpected blessing in the background. You will see that no. man ever had a defect that was not somehow useful to him. As such unfits you for one purpose, so, in proportion, and-by the use of thoise ancient scales, are yon weighed out for another. The situation here has something of noblesse oblige, for your very infirmity imposes its obligations, its own balance.

“Humanity is expected to balance the pans. We are given things in a hotch-potch, an exceedingly medley package, like a thief’s loot sack. The job is to sort it out, weighing one thing against ani other in a way that will reasonably ensure life going on in civilisation, saifficiency, and peace.”