PLAYING TOO HARD

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 258, 23 June 1932, Page 7

PLAYING TOO HARD

THE IMPORTANCE OF NOT BECOMING TOO EARNEST. A MODERN COMPLEX. Sidney Dark is the author of this article and although he frequently quotes man as tbe culprit, I think il is meant to apply equally to women. I think it is well worth while includ"ing in our page this week. "Life is real, life is earnest," savs the author of a well known hymn. But life is just as real arid incidentaliy far more pleasant if it is not lived too earnestly. The critics of the age are wont to deplore our flippancy and frivolity, but it is surprising to find low many people are characterised by a dreadful earnestness of purpose, almost always concerned with things that do not matter in the least— -especially is this found in the field of sport. Anyone might think, to watch a person play a game, that their whole life depended upon it, instead of playing for the mere lust of pleasure. Time was when men and women played games for fun. To-day,- study even moderately competent tennis players on very ordinary courts! See

their stramed faces! Adnure their resolution! The ball is watched with fierce eagerness and tennis is no longer a game, it is a tremendous struggle waged with a re'lentless and deadly fixity of purpose that is no less sincer.e because it is applied to an end of the smallest significance. Study, too, the face of a golfer wlio has foozled a stroke (and those who play know how easy that is to do) and' sympathise with the player's ! agony. It seems to have a far worse 1 eueet than drawing a tooth. Then again, witness a bedraggled plus man coming in beaten by bogie! The world is ceasing to know how to , play because the world has learnt to play too well. We can no longer really play any game, because we are : too self-conscious to play the fool. , It has become bad form to do any- ' thing just for fun, and anyone who only wants to amuse himself is re- i garded as an intolerable nuisance. The whole thing has risen from a false sense of personal dignity. The modern young man is ashamed to i face his wife if he fails to heat his | opponent in the golf championship or tennis tournament, and shudders at | his own ignominy, endeavouring feverishly to conjure plausihle excuses to take home to the family. Everywhere there is this same overearnestness. Everyone yearns to be a champion if it is only at ping- i pong, and finds great satisfaction in j discussing their superior knowledge j with the unexpert. They seem to be J so possessed with their own particular fancy that no other interest matters. It is infiinitely hetter to be ahle to do a large number of things comparatively well than to do one thing superlatively well. It is hetter to regard nothing very seriously than to regard one thing — espeeially games — overseriously. It is the person who lceeps nis earnestness in hand who profits best, for he is more able to take defeat Jightly and as we say "pick himself up from the gutter, wipe the mud from his trousers and start again. Let us look in upon a four at bridge — a most harrowing sight! There they are with fixed expressions ready to "bite their partners' heads off" should they not play the right card at the right minute. Oh, you bridge players needn't smile, for isn't it perf ectly true ? It becomes very weary to be associated with an over-earnest person for long, who does nothing unless he is serious — we term him out of sheer exasperation a bare and a prig. Some of the very hest people this world has ever known have been extaaordinarily frivolous, so you see the art of not heing too earnest can he practised to a very good purpose if it is to help us to become greater men and women.