ADAPTATION TO LIFE

Shannon News, 28 October 1927, Page 4

ADAPTATION TO LIFE

Some people always leave us a little less pleased with life than we were when we met them. They are usually those who have more obvious sources of pleasure and satisfaction than we have. But they never think they :have enough money or enough success,' because they are always looking enviously at those who have still more of both. Hence their irritation against those of as who have, achieved an adaptation to life, independent

of circumstances. But Avhenever they can they -wound us with their clever shafts; they point out ou r lacks; they emphasise our Aveaknesses; they know how to touch us on. the quick and to bring back tn full force that overwhelming longing for happiness, for fullness of experience, for freedom from daily -work and duties and limitations -which we all know so well, so much too well, even those of us who have consciously and not unlaAvfully accepted our conditions and disciplined those human wishes.

How dare we, who have nothing, not be miserable? they seem to ask. So they try to make us miserable, and sometimes they succeed. It is easy for them to do so. 1 They are quicker and cle\ p erer than we are. We have no replies. When they tell us that our place is only despair, and our way of life a compulsory sublimation, we must leave it at that. By and by, when’they have gone away, and we have disentangled tlje various impressions they have made with their bright epigrams and their depressing implications, we pull ourselves tor gether and find that, afte r all, they have not taken aAA r ay our dearlybought adjustment to life. It may be all we haA'e but no one can take It from us.