TO KEEP FIT.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 15 August 1924, Page 7

TO KEEP FIT.

MISTAKE OF BEING' BORED. VALUE OF VARIETY. (By the Medical Correspondent of The Times.) Every now and then we lose interest in life. What interested profoundly a few days ago appears now dull and unprofitable. Yet worse still, what was expected to interest merely bores. In such circumstances foolish men say that they are growing older. "Being bored, however, is no sign of age, as anyone may prove by visiting the haunts* of the jeunesee doree. It is a sign rather of satiety. The bored man has had too much of a good—or bad —thing. He may, for example, have had too much of his own business. So much that he wearies of its profits (losses, whatever may be said of them, do not produce boredom) or of its progress. The facts and figures which once seemed so thrilling now lack the power to arouse any enthusasm.

Or he may be weary of the whole round of his daily life, luncheon and dinner, amusement, even rest. The cause is never quite clear. AVhy should the good things have ceased to charm ?

Strange as it may seem, that is a very difficult question to answer. For there is no question here of ill-health or overwork, both of which are “cures” of boredom.

Perhaps the nearest analogy is that of the visitor to a strange city. At first he will see a hundred things to interest him. and his letters home will he full of vigour and freshness. But as time passes a strange blindness is sure to fall. When that period arrives his letters will contain nothing but news about himself. The outside world will, interest no longer. LACK OF PERCEPTION.

Boredom, the “spoiled child of mental'troubles,” as it was called recently, is really a form of mental blindness. We have eyes, but we do not see. Or rather we see without that free ‘.‘flow” of association which makes seeing important and interesting. The business fact which yesterday was significant as a sign of growth, or of increasing usefulness, or of the coming to fruition of a new idea, has lost its significance. It is now only—a business fact. There is the state of mind described in the lines: . A primrose by the river’s brim A yellow primrose was to him And it was nothing more. To escape from boredom it is essential to see not only the fact itself, hut the “something more” which makes the fact living and important. That is to say, boredom is a temporary loss of imagination, a kind of “sleepy sickness” of that portion of the brain which links our small activities to the greater activities of the whole world. . Imagination feeds on enterprise, and the elements of enterprise are observation and courage. The pioneer in business is not a gambler, though he may take risks. He is a person who has seen what other men “saw without seeing.” Should he lose that special quality of sight he will' cease to pioneer. Enterprise will forsake him.

Therein, perhaps, lies the secret of boredom. Just .as the visitor to a new country becomes blind to its features if he stays too long, so the business man becomes blind to his business if he devotes too much attention to it while it is successful and profitable—that is to say. whilst it is making no special demands on his anxiety. “IT’S AN ILL WIND.” Hence it follows that a season of bad trade may serve as the necessary stimulus to a great expansion of enterprise. In the absence of such a “blessing in disguise,” however, boredom should be taken as a warning that the time has .come to go out into the woi'ld and find new objects of interest. Ma.ny unsuccessful men wonder how the leaders of industry “find the time” to be interested in matters not connected with their own enterprises. The answer to that query is that if they did not they could not continue to lead. It is. in fact, a great untruth that “John Smith succeeded by minding his own business.” To mind one’s own business exclusively, unless that business is in difficulties, is, in most cases, to spoil it. Minding other people’s business, ,on the contrary, restores the lost mental sight. We begin to see things again with the eye of imagination. Life resumes its aspect of interest. When that happens John Smith may return to hi?_ own desk. He will find the once boring routine of his office both exhilarating and astonishing. How was it that he did not see this and that before? Some men never get bored ; they are the hewers of wood and drawers of water. For boredom is the penalty of imagination, the “curse of pioneers.” It is not very prevalent just now because difficult times have demanded alertness and zeal. But as trade' improves it is bound to reappear. The truth is that variety is much more than the spice of life* It is of the essence of life itself.