TALKING OF TROUBLE!

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20908, 13 September 1939, Page 4

TALKING OF TROUBLE!

THE FAR-REACHING EFFECT OF GROUSING

I find myself often considerably annoyed by the young these days, because of their fog-like gloom. I am not one o*f those who believe that youth is the best period of one’s life. To say that seems to me as obviously foolish as it would be to say that the stage one most enjoys riding is when one has just begun and spends most of the time falling off one’s horse. One looks one’s best when one is very young, but one does not feel one’s best—no, indeed, when one still says things which give a wrong impression of one’s character, and innocently confides all one's secrets to the worst cat in London, and is apt to fall in love with people who have no use for yo.uth but to break it. One feels like an amateur actress making her first professional appearance in a very onerous part with an audience that'daps at the end of the acts but goes out into the foyer during the intervals and hisses. Later life, I think, holds no such horrors as befall the very young and sensitive. But for that very reason youth has cause to be cheerful. For every year these things happen less and less, as one gets a better control of the situation. One learns to say what one means, one learns to recognise the cat and dodge her purrs and her claws alike, and in the end one loves with wisdom. I think there is no doubt that for the normal person, provided he or she keeps good health and does not fall into some pocket of frustration, life becomes more and more enjoyable every year, up to a limit it is very difficult to fix. A man of sixty told me the other day that all his life long he had fo-und the world increasingly pleasant and more solidly satisfying, and that the process did not seem to be stopping yet. It was not that he was becoming more contented and resigned. He was, in fact, rather an impatient and hottempered person. But every year brought him not only fresh experience, but a more educated power of enjoying it. Life Still Goes On And I think we all have seen evidence that even when this process stops and one reaches the limit there then sets in a fatigue which prepares the subject for the natural end of the story. Dark things are said by the youth of today about this being a pretty world to grow up into, and having no chance. And when one points out that in time the present international situation will right itself, and we will all be able so adapt ourselves to existing conditions, they speak of the decay of civilisation Then one points out that there is no reason to suppose that our civilisation is going to decay, since one passed dividend does not make a winter, but that if it did it would probably happen slowly and without inflicting much discomfort on individuals. Many people lived and died during the decay of the Roman Empire without having their pains or pleasures affected in any way by what was happening all round them. And if youth is worrying about being part of a doomed civilisation and feeling that all his efforts will be wasted, let him spur his ambition a little further forward and he will see that no efforts are ever wasted, if they are sufficiently distinguished. Any worthy part of a doomed civilisation goes right on and is incorporated in the civilisation that succeeds it. There is no occasion for youth to be anxious. They are not really going down the drain, and there is all the ultimate enjoyable quality of life to entertain them. But this they do not feel; and that must mean that somebody has been lying to them about the ultimate quality of life. The Effect of Grousing of Youth But the worst consequence of all this grousing is its effect on youth, because it does much to make these lies truth. Life is, in the absence of pain and anxiety, poverty and loneliness, a very tolerable state. But it is not bearable if one gets a community of despairing and hysterical people who grab at everything they can get because they tnmK tne general state of need is so great that chivalry and politeness would be steer folly. And that is what this grousing will produce if it goes on. CSVilisatifltfm-built up by inventing certain standards and pretending that pedple naturally live up to them, and the result is agreeable. There is nothing more certain than that barbarism can be procured if people constantly assume a condition of such ruin that anybody would be a fool who adhered to any standards except self-interest. In fact, people •who grouse may, if they go on, really have something to grouse about.