TOPICS OF THE DAY

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21177, 29 July 1940, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY

Chosen Way of Life "I was talking to an old friend,” writes Mr J. A. Spender, “about the different kinds of life we had led, and he put the question, ‘Supposing you had three lives to live, how, after your experience, would you choose to live them?’ Then a rather curious thing happened. We both decided that for one of our lives we would, with certain amendments, live over again the lives we had lived. This was not from any complacency or reluctance to acknowledge sins, disappointments. failures, mortifications; it was simply, when we came up to it, that the thought of missing what we had known and prized—our own bits of love, friendship, beauty, the light and shade on our familiar world, was unendurable. Emptied of these the idea of life seemed suddenly meaningless; to give it meaning it had to be furnished with the warm and concrete things of our own experience. All this familiar furniture came trailing after us when we began to talk n other lives.”