SQUINTING AT LIFE.

Cromwell Argus, Volume LXI, Issue 3166, 8 June 1931, Page 2

SQUINTING AT LIFE.

Before people talk about being failures and accuse themselves of making a mess of life they should make sure they have got their sense of values properly adjusted. Success or failure so often depends on the point of view. I think it was John Ruskln who said: "He only is advancing in life whose heart is geting softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into living peace." The things that matter, the things that are really the test of a man, are not always those that are seen by the outside world. Material success and material gain are not always the measure of a human soul; for they can be obtained by honesty and straight dealing. But no trickery can build a happy home, keep alive the love of wife and children and the warm affection of acquaintances and friends. No fraud can secure loyalty and respect and happiness; and it is things like that that are the acid test of what a man is capable of making of life.

Do you remember what Archibishop Trench once said? "Not all who seem to fall have failed indeed, Not all who fail have therefore worked in vain. There is no failure for the good and . brave."

And some unknown poet once said truly that "God in his goodne.° sees beneath some failure? great successes"; meaning, I think, that many a man who seems to the world to have failed has, all the same, won many a victory over himself, done the hard thing when it would have been less trouble to do something else, taken the straight-road when it would have been easier to go crooked, and behaved like a man when it would have been less trouble to behave like a coward.

Before we talk about success or failure, then, let us get our focus on life properly adjusted. Where I think people are failures is that they are sorry for themselves. The minute we are that, we are handicapped, we are "derelicts. Why should we be sorry for ourselves? If things go wrong, maybe the fault is ours for trying to do the wrong things; perhaps we are straining after something beyond our powers instead of quietly making a succesu of something humbler but much more useful; perhaps v/e are busy sacrificing some solid reality like health, domestic happiness, contentment of mind, or an easy con* science in a futile chase after some glittering shadow that we shouldn't really like if we could ever obtain it.

It is all a matter of proportion. Fame and distinction and wealth are not .necessarily the hall-marks of success. I remember many years ago John Burns tells an audience roundly and bluntly that "it is not always the sty that is responsible • for the discomfort of the pig!" The truth is that every one of us knows better than anyone can tell us just where and why we have fallen short of what we are seeking in life. If we pretend we don't —we are simply refusing to be honest with ourselves. We are pretending that it is always and inevitably the sty that is to blame.