BETWEEN FRIENDS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 288, 25 February 1928, Page 20

BETWEEN FRIENDS

We talk very loosely about “ideals,” some of us fatuously and some of us flippantly, acording to our error. The very word has had a somewhat strange histoy, for to the Greeks “ideals” were the supreme values of life, and to us to-day almost anything is ideal, from a marriage to a matchbox. If we make a guess at what the average intelligent person means by his or her ideals, we find that some standard of well-being, as the individual man or woman understand well-being, is indicated. But we are so diverse that some of us want to be adventurous and some of us want to be safe: some of us want pleasure and some of us desire some form of beneficial activity, the spending of our powers on something beyond self; some of us want to be rich and some of us want to be loved and companioned. Any genuine conception of value, however material the value, may in this sense be grouped under the heading of “ideals.” We should acknowledge to ourselves what our conceptions of

value are, and not pretend that anything less or anything different will do instead. Moralists may say “All, but you should encourage the woman whose ideals stop at beautiful surroundings to understand that beautiful thoughts count for more.” But the woman who sincerely appreciates outward beauty will not approach inner beauty by pretending that she enjoys living in a tastelessly furnished villa. If she must live there, let her do it good-humouredly, by all means, but let her keep honesty. It is a dangerous thing to go back on any ideal, and it is a false philosophy which tells us to like what we have if we cannot have what we like. There are people who will try to persuade us away from our ideals either for their own purposes or through mistaken ideas of helping us to be happier. Some of us who have ideals of companionship, for instance, and who cannot find any significance or solace in the orthodox social life, are often asked to give up our comparative solitude, to pull ourselves together, and see if we cannot become “good sorts.” Now, the world would be much the poorer without its jolly, 1 hail-fellow-well-met people; but we ! cannot be as they are—the service we render our fellow-humans is different, | our pleasure is different. Many people j experience days of such dishearten-

ment that they would abandon th< ideal that in some senses and in som< directions is a limiting- thing, but thej cannot. Never think that you car dodge your ideals. They are inescapable, because they are yourself.