EASY MONEY MYTH

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 200, 7 January 1942, Page 5

EASY MONEY MYTH

MERELY A STATE OF MIND)

LET THE COBBLER STICK TO HIS LAST

This is not a lecture on the dangers of gambling or a piece of advice about how to be a good little boy. How a man spends his spare time is entirely his own affair, and, nobody (except perhaps his wife) has any kick coming if he uses his bank notes for lighting his pipe. It's lioav he uses his working time that counts. And. in his working hours he won't find any easy money going around.

It's not the gambling in itself that is dangerous to a 'salesman's prospects. It's the state of mind it helps to foster. Most of us have some lelaxation—Ave enjoy a game, of bridge or an entertaining book or something of the sort. We can't live for work all the time, but these are real relaxations —they do not lead to dangerous habits of thought. The search for easy money does.

Now and again Ave hear of someone who- lias made a big win at "the races." But thinlc back and you'll realise how rarely it happens and what vast numbers of losses are incurred in every win. Give the bookmaker credit for intelligence—he wouldn't be in the game if it didn't pay handsomely, and lie knows a great deal more about it than the.

average man ever will or can.

The racecourse is only one of many ways in which we can dissipate our energies in the hope of "striking it soft." Some men "play the stock market" in mucli the same spirit. Some play poker immoderately. All such activities are, based on day dreams. They are first cousins to the habit of mooning about, thinking what Ave'd do if Ave were suddenly left a fortune.

Life is a stern reality. Sometimes a man here and there is left a fortune —and does win a Tatt's Sweep or the Golden Casket—does "strike it lucky"—but think of the millions who, never have and never will. You and I and practically all of us have to build our lives on' a more solid basis than impossible hopes.

The trouble is that if w r e let our minds dwell on the possibility of easy money, we strike at the very roots of our energy, we sap our enthusiasm, we destroy ourselves, morally, as surely as if we opened a vein and let our heart's blood pulse away. We gradually become incapable of effort and tend more and more to slip into a world of dreams and golden impossibilities. Every park in the world harbours: men who started life with high hopes and who were ruined by the insidious disease of dreaming instead of acting.

This world is not an The man who wants the big prizes has to fight for them. But he finds that when he puts is whole spirit into the. fight, difficulties fade away. He gets greater joy from achievement than ever came from a lucky hit. He finds that steady relentless pursuit of a decent object in life builds its own reward. Success breeds success; confidence breeds confidence. And as he rises to greater achievement his; horizon expands; he sees wider and more inspiring vistas before him, and he is buoyed up with the truly satisfying consciousness that he has used, the sacred trust of life to its best advantage. He has striven with all his might and left the world a little more advanced than he found it. He has, at least, done something and not merely dreamed of doing it.