IS ANYBODY SATISFIED?

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume IX, Issue 82, 21 March 1919, Page 6

IS ANYBODY SATISFIED?

SQUARE PEGS IN ROUND HOLES. Why is it that everyone, man or woman, invariably appears to have the very worst position in the world ? Says the banker: “Don’t take up banking. It’s the worst paid, most overworked drudgery there is. My son is going to have a profession.” Says the doctor: “My time is never my own. No eight-hour idea for the doctor. He is going hard all day ami all night—and there’s trouble if anything goes wrong. A commercial life is the thing every time.” Says the business man: “No son of mine will ever come into this turmoil. Worry, worry, worry by day, and no sleep at night, because the anxiety won’t leave you. Get into the Government. All soft jobs there —and on big sure salaries, too. Says the Public Service man: “Keep out of this. There are just a few rich plums t to be picked, but they go by influence. Go on the land.” Says the farmer: “The city’s the place to make money. It’s blood money, too—made at the expense of the man on the land. From dawn till dark the farmer slaves away, fighting drought, fire, flood, and pest, and the little he does manage to scrape out of it goes to those robbers in the city.” Thus they go on. The journalist will advise you to do everything—sweep streets, sell papers —but don’t follow “the inky way.” The teacher has the most wearing work; the typiste the most nerve-racking; someone else the most injurious. Is anybody satisfied? Perhaps we just drift into the first available position, and keep to it (generally detesting it), only because it brings in the wherewithal that enables us to live.

One is a doctor because his father was one; another an architect, whether inclination led that way or not, because his father and grandfather were architects before him. Is that why so few of us excel in our work?

Yet, who ever hears a growl about a hobby? It may call for much thought, hard labour, and endless training, but it will claim our full interest, and, therefore, it is along that line, we excel. With all the pleasure in the world 'we give any amount of overtime to it, working day and night if necessary to perfect one idea. A hobby is a natural inclination. If we make the hobby the life’s work, will we not then have more chance of attaining that degree of excellence needed to make success?

People who have excelled in their life’s work seem to be those whose minds and hands worked with their hearts.

Robert Clive was an indifferent clerk. He forsook the pen for the sword, and made a great soldier. There are hundreds of others showing us the way, yet we place a lad showing remarkable oratorical talent on the land, because someone said there was money' in that, and a girl with real drawing ability in an office where she answers the telephone and sorts letters, because that was what offered itself when she left school.

There is a bright girl now. selling hats (and hating it so) in a big retail store in Sydney, who, at school a few years ago was a brilliant mathematician ; and" at another counter, a boy from the same school who made marvellous experiments in chemistry before he was 14, and whose every interest was (and is) wrapped in gases and chemicals, now sells incandescent burners I

Natural inclination is a gift. Some of us don’t get that gift. Let those be the drifters. But if those of us with the God-given natural bent combine that gift and our life’s work, shouldn’t we be a more contented community—and a more prosperous one? R. B.