THE DESIRE TO EMULATE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19778, 27 October 1927, Page 7

THE DESIRE TO EMULATE.

"Very few people ate qualified to change others," I heard a girl say the other day, says a contemporary writer. Someone else had been exclaiming against the smug and remarking that it seems impossible to challenge them or shake them out of their complacency. The girl agreed to that. "Tho more you 'sit oa them' the worse they are. They become , worse in self-defence. You cannot do anything." But the other speaker seemed to cling to the idea that something, should be done, or at least attempted. Perhaps the chief qualification foe changing otliers is to be so scious that you have no thought of your effect on them, one way or the other*. People of wide imagination can change us—those of us who are too smug —it is true, by their very talk. They can show us points of view which have not occurred to us. They can throw out a suggestion which, upon examination, seems almost infinite in its implication. With them we do "walk among the stars." Vet even these are not necessarily tlie people who bring about deep changes in character. They add tremendously to our delight in life, but there is the danger that we may remain satisfied with the pleasure they give us. Besides, they are sometimes, perhaps often, inclined toward egotism themselves. It is simplicity that cuts like a knife through the egotistical or complacent crust which surrounds us. It is when we find that people are not trying to impress ns or to alarm us, or to do any* thing but us, should service to us come their way, that we find our layers of selfishness 'being torn off us. The beauty of their being changes us. Not what they say, not what they set cutto do for ns, or to us, but just what they are. These people bring with them a set of values different from the customary; they are care-free without being careless, happy without being preoccupied. They change us by oar desire* however momentary, to be like them.