ON BEING SUCCESSFUL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 253, 25 October 1932, Page 6

ON BEING SUCCESSFUL.

Not the least interesting feature of the letters recently published in our column* on the crossword puzzle is the witness borne to the pleasure that can attend partial or occasional failure (says "The Times"). The most appreciative letter of all came from one who frankly admitted that he (or she) had never yet attained a complete solution. Renewed endeavour and enduring hope continued to be their own reward, but a sufficient one all the same. That is the right spirit. How sorry by contrast is the plight of the too successful solver! His downward path is easy to trace. Finding that solution has become more or leas a matter of course, he seeks a stimulant in competing against a friend or in timing himself against his own previous record. When that goad loses its point he sinks into the last infirmity of the superior crossword mind and practises solution in his head without writing down word or letter. And if ever the time comes when the unhappy man can do that habitually with ease, yet ono more pleasurable activity will have committed suicide by the excess of its own perfection. It is of great significance for more than crosswords that there is more pleasure in honest effort that has no certainty of reaching its goal than in success assured from the very start. What is lightly won is lightly valued. As every administrator and every propagandist knows, men set little store by that which is put before them gratis. Effort rather than success is the main Tnaredient in satisfaction. So widespread is the application of that principle that it looks like a law of man's existence. It clearly holds good in the material sphere. Many a man who has thoroughly enjoyed the struggle to get wealth, power or fame lias been bored to death on his pinnacle of success by having nothing more to strive for. Recently the* president of the British Association testified to the truth of the principle in the realm of intellect. "With every gain of knowledge," he said, "we realise more clearly that we can never really know." But he added: "Our joy in the quest itself-never fails; we are constantly learning that it is better to travel than to arrive." The paradox reigns supreme in the moral and spiritual world. Some degree of success there ntlii't be. or miserable man would sink back helplessly into his Slough of Despond. But it must be relative success only, never complete. On attainment it must point to something still more worthy of desire beyond itself. The rest on the summit must be but a breathing space for a new attack upon the higher peaks which its conquest has opened up. . For .continuing life in that ampler air there must always be some height not yet won and magnetic by its present inaccessibility. It is wrong to complain that there is i;o end to the progress. The spirit of man is no finished and finite thing, but an evolving organism, gradually unfolding fresh possibilities under the spell nf'somc "far-off, divine event" which, perpetually receding, by a miracle enhances, rather than exhausts, the hope of ultimate attainment. Life lies in the process, not in finality. It is the condition of endeavour and advance that, whatever our successes or failures by the way, we should retain the faith that "the best is yet to be." The last thing to be desired is success so complete as to put an end to trying.