FROM A WOMAN’S ARMCHAIR

Manawatu Times, Volume LII, Issue 6485, 17 December 1927, Page 15

FROM A WOMAN’S ARMCHAIR

(By Mavis Clare.)

At some time or another, I suppose, most of us have banked on the wrong people, Investing them with all sorts of magnificent qualities they have never possessed, and crediting them with a fineness existing only in our own imagination. Then suddenly, unbelievably, the illusion is shattered, and the idol’s feet of clay arc revealed. For a time, our predominant emotion is one of self-pity. We arc tremendously sorry for ourselves, and suffer from a sense of bitter Injury, Then presently, as we begin to recover from the shock .and the wounded ego gropes its way back to logic, we realise how foolish we are to lament the irreparable and the inevitable. And if w e are at all honest with ourselves, we taks a retrospective survey of all the indubitable happiness that was

ours before disillusionment came. And if with honesty we combine some measure of philosophical wisdom, wc learn one of the most valuable lessons that experience can teach humanity. ,Wc conic sadly but surely to the same realisation that it is useless to expect people to give more than their natures arc capable of giving. It is not thc-ir fault if wc have lifted them to the heights when in plain fact they dwell on th c non-heroic level of self-love, expediency and materialism. If we have misinterpreted those very human characteristics, it is our own lack of insight wc must blame; not the failure of mediocrity to ris c above its innate type. Reviewing those happier days, before oui- own blindness was made known, it would be an ingralc s part indeed to remember only the foot of clay. While they wore invisible the idol was all that our fond imagination painted. The sweet illusion made Life a thanksgiving festival. Is it altogether a misfortune that mediocrity—seen through the eyes of illusion —can put an edge on beauty for ns, and enhance the savour of living? Thc reality of greatness is for thc rare spirits who conquer the heights. How many of us have won the right to count, ourselves among thc godlike company?