NEW CRAZES

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 276, 11 February 1928, Page 19

NEW CRAZES

THE SAMENESS OF LIFE People who ought to know say that our modern society is sick for the need of a new craze. Everything, they declare, is the same everywhere for the people who have enough money to go everywhere. It does not seem possible to invent a new sensation. Every idea has been tried. They say that it may become quite un-smart to be smart, and that the most sophisticated woman will take to simplicity and needlework. Those of us who are not in a position to know the truth about these things can only listen with appropriate respect to such sayings. How true it is that new crazes are wanted we cannot tell, but this much we know —having learned it through a more commonplace grapple with life—that if you wish to lose your boredom you must achieve a new angle. A new craze is not a new angle; it is merely the dose as before, but ceasing to be effective. Getting a Fresh Angle The most useful of our new angles are those which we achieve without changing our circumstances. Often, of course, a change in circumstance will jolt us to the new angle, but the one which we find for ourselves is the more valuable and more valid. Things that happen to us may cause only a seeming change in ourselves; the changes we bring about in ourselves are real changes. Consider your attitude towards the things that are already yours; your work, your home, your friendships, your love affair, your marriage; the books you read, the games you enjoy. Are you appropriating all the good that there is in these things, or are you missing much of it because your eye is so constantly fixed on something that you have not? You do not, perhaps, like your circumstances very much. Someone else has more money, more beauty, more cleverness, more success. Full Appreciation Yes, but you have to begin to be happy where you are. You must intelligently accept the good gifts that are yours; you must both cherish and use them. Things that we have get dull, or, rather, we get dull towards them. We do not put enough energy into our appreciation of old friends, or of a husband who is no longer new; we do not remember to be thankful for our work o.r to see whether we cannot improve it and ourselves by some form of expansion; w© give stereotyped, formal sympathy instead of mixing our sympathy with our brains, which makes it interesting to ourselves as well as vitally helpful to people who need it. Life is interesting. It is we who are dull. The realisations that come to us when we are quiet and receptive and not too selfish are worth all the sensations that ever were.

All-over beaded dresses are waning in popularity, and women will be glad to hear that black, which has been rather ousted of late for the smartest occasions, is coming back into its own.