MISTAKES TO BE AVOIDED.

Auckland Star, 2 September 1933, Page 2 (Supplement)

MISTAKES TO BE AVOIDED.

(By S.) I. There is a sense in which every life is a composition. "W'e aro each of tis writing tic qualities and giving to ourselves the character and the atmosphere wo call personality. Now, if we were merely writing our thoughts, we should have one advantage that we lack in composing our life—wo could go back on our work and correct :■* mistakes, and improve its style before putting it into the hands of the printer, and if we were sensitive and punctilious in the matter of stylo and attached the importance to it that our best writers do, we could rewrite phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and even whole chapters, if we were so minded. Ruskin, one of the most sensitivo and punctilious writers that ever lived, is eaid to have written whole chapters three times over before he was satisfied to let tl'.eru leave his hands. In linking our life with the everlasting realities, we cannot go back on our work and undo it, or amend it. As the poet says: Whatever hns been written shall remain, Nor bo erased, nor written o'er again. But we can do this—we can think of the mistakes we may have made and try to avoid them in future. Ono of the mistakes to which many people are prone is that of putting undue emphasis on their disappointments. They let the mind dwell on them too much, instead of letting it lightly touch on them, and then pass on. If we are wise we shall make it a rule never to let the mind dwell on what will do it harm, and we should never let it dwell on our disappointments. We cannot be too careful about what we allow to occupy our thoughts—it is so easy to mar the- charm and the value of our personality.

But there is a still greater mistake to which many people are prone, and that is the mistake of allowing themselves to be so paralysed by their disappointments as to lose their powers of resource. There is no need to be like the fox in the fable, which, failing to reach the grapes trelissed high above his head, went away rruttering: "What does it matter? They are sour." There is no need for tis to console ourselves for our disappointments in that fashion. We can quietly bear them, and keep pegging away, as Lincoln used to say, and hope njid "pray that bettor things are in store for us. And how often disappointed men have found that there were better things in store for them than ever they had dreamed of. Lincoln i« himself a case in point. 'He had set his heart on getting one of tao minor poets under the American Government, but his ambition was not realised. In tho providence of God a much higher and more important post was in store for him—that of the Presidentship of the American Government and people. That was the post he was needed for, and that he adorned, and it is doubtful if there is a premier or a sovereign in the world to-day who is his equal in the combination of the qualities of mind and heart that stamp a man great.