MIDDLE AGE

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 247, 9 January 1928, Page 4

MIDDLE AGE

Don’t let us fear middle age. Most folk, as it looms rather threateningly in the near distance, hide their faces from it. That is not the way to meet it. When we were children we were always being told crush the nettle in our hand, and then it couldn’t sting us. That’s the idea. If we greet middle age with no frowning or fussing, if we meet it as quietly and graciously as we meet our friends, we shall find that, after all, middle age is not such a very bad thing. And it isn’t —far from it. Middle age can and will be most considerate to us if we will treat it as it should be treated. Getting panicky about its coming is just about as silly a thing as you can imagine. It gets you jumping. It begins to jump itself, and it arrives at your bidding years before it is due. It is the old story. Fuss about a thing, make trouble about it, tell yourself in fearsome accent that it is going to be dreadful, and sure enough it will be. You’ll pulverise your soul and your mind that way. Instead of middle* age being just a joyoUs maturity, with all the wonderful quiet colours'of the autumn resting lovingly on your head, there will settle upon and around you a horrid cold winter of discontent. Middle age, if we are sensible about it, may be a renaissance of youth. It only becomes a fear when we make it a fear.