Random Reflections:-

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 337, 19 January 1937, Page 3

Random Reflections:-

By

“JOPPA.”

The weather has been most unsear Bonable. It nearly always is in our opinion. Of course, the chap .who keeps records of the sunshine and rain and all that kind of thing can prove that our memory is mistaken and that the average rainshine or sunfall or whatever it is has not varied in Taranaki, not even in Inglewood, for the last 27 years by more than .001, and that this season it is only .0007 out of the average. The average I believe is round about 50 inches a year for this part of the world. Now just think what a iness it would make if it all flopped down at once, or in round about even one * month. It, luckily, is distributed through the year, so why growl about it? Have you fever considered what causes the rain? I looked up a text book on the subject and here it is: “The distribution of rain over the earth's surface depends upon the influences that force air to ascend rapidly.” Hot air (for air to ascend it must be hot, as you know) hot air that’s the cause! i You can see that in New Zealand. , Where is the most hot air let off? I On the West Coast of the South Is- J land, isn’t it, among the miners and I political radicals down there, and the result? The heaviest rainfall of the Dominion —averaging 120 inches per annum'. Or, if you want hardly any at all, you go to the Sahara Desert where the dour, silent Tuareg dwells or to Central Australia where the wayback trudges his solitary, voiceless way. Hot air—there’s the trouble. So now you can see why the last few summers have been so wet. What else can we expect with all the hot air from economic reformers, food faddists, Douglas creditors, Labour ministers, Fascists, Common- 1 ists. Nationalist also-rans and who not? Hot air all the time ascending to the heavens till they have wept from sheer boredom. Or is it the weeping of the angels at all the futile hot air we humans are letting off? We all want to change everything so as to suit ourselves. The Bolsheviks did it in Russia on a grand scale in a welter of blood and tears and misery, with what result? Russia is dirtier, poorer, drowsier than it was before, and the Government is as tyrannical and brutal as under the Tsars. There is only a. change of tyrants and spies and the present lot seem uglier at any rate than the old gang. You remember Omar Khayyams ditty—- “ Dear love, could you and I with Fate conspire To smash this sorry scheme of things entire, Would we not shatter it to bits, and then Remould it nearer to the heart’s desire?” We all think that. How we could fix up the weather to suit ourselves

if we were allowed. No haymaking in the wet! No rain at Christmas and New Year! No rain on race days or over week-ends! But stop—there’s a race or sP Or *ts meeting nearly every day in New Zeai land. We would be in for a dry time, j I’m afraid. Almost as bad as the i U.S.A, under prohibition. No, when you begin to think it out, we cannot all have just the conditions we would like. All the other chaps would want something different. It’s a good thing the weather and suchlike are settled for us. We have to take what is given and the art of life is in mastering these given conditions. By such striving to win mastery, by making the best of things, we learn wisdom, patience and insist. Think of how much interest could be added to dairy farming if you set yourself to find a scientific method of making dry hay in a wet season! .Even if you never succeeded you would have the zest of the inventor swinging through your life and at least one new topic for conversation. i There tare some conditions wfe jean alter and should alter—these manmade conditions of injustice, ignore | ance, dirt and ugliness. Have you ever noticed that all the pgly thing:; in the world are man-made? Nature is always beautiful or she gets busy making it beautiful. The old dead log is covered with mosse s and lichers, th e gash in the garth’s surface becomes a fern-filled golly, old bin is graven and coloured by the rust, the dust gives blue to the jsky and glory to the sunset.

Our business in life is to assist this work of making beauty and increasing value. Life is not meant to be easy; this world is not just arranged for our needs. Everything we want is somewhere around but we have to look for it and when found, shape it to our use. In the process we ourselves grow in strength and wisdom, unseasonable seasons are part of the rules of the game, difficult conditions give the added sauce life requires. Pliant politicians and windy theorists offer you what you like, and we are often fools enough to be caught by their promises. They can fix prices, manipulate the rates of exchange and play all sorts of tricks to give us an easier time. But amid our planning God steps in—“No, you don’t, my little humans, who would run the universe to suit yourselves. This is My world and before I give you anything you must earn it. You don’t know yourselves as well as 1, your Creator, do. It is written in My Book by one of my wise children—‘He gave them their heart’s desire, but sent leanness to their souls’.” It is not what w[e have that makes life worth while, lit is what we are. And no conditions can be<jt u s 'until we surrender the citadel of our own hearts.