"STILL UNSURE"

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21792, 5 May 1934, Page 1 (Supplement)

"STILL UNSURE"

BY LADY ADAMS

PEERING INTO THE FUTURE

" Futurc-peerers " are a sad race. They are not content with their present or their past, and they want above everything to lift the curtain and see what the future holds for them. To this end they employ every aid from tea-leaves to high-priced astrologers, from the lines in their own hands to the crystal, in a seer's. We have all heard these weird tales of " generals of world-wide celebrity " who, before they went to the front, resorted to Bond Street prophets—and profiteers —who for much fine gold told them their future. And we have all marvelled at those same generals and have commiserated them; for, even if the Bond Street seers did not predict the deaths of the generals, at least their tale would be —would have to be —full of the most Sliakesperean descriptions of battles and blood and moans and devastating death, all of which would be bad for the nerves and mental poise of the generals. Wise students of human nature, of course, think that future-peering is one of the stupidest ways to spend time. They hold that ignorance of the future is a spurt to effort and to progress. What scholar, they ask, would resolve to devote his life to, say, the Elizabethan period of English, literature if he knew, and believed, that he was to die, without warning, on his thirty-first birthday? What actress would devote laborious hours to tho technique of tho stage if sho had been assured that an accident was to cut her off when she was barely twenty-four? Ambition and hope would be gone, and they would be content to wait for the appointed hour, which, when it came, would almost certainly slip by like other hours, and leave them open-mouthed and with a good deal of leeway to make up. Of course, in the case of men and women who are suffering from definitely mortal illnesses, tho case is different. Then the doctor, who knows, who is backed by his scientific observations and by the opinion of a colleague, has to act the part of soothsayer. But that is quite different, and needs only a passing allusion. " The Old Man Dreams " Many people do not want to know their own future, but, knowing their own past, would like to live their own lives over again, thus, they think, being able to avoid the mistakes that have brought them unhappiness or bad fortune. That idea always seems to me to be the essence of stupidity. It puzzles me to understand how an apparently sane person can have such a wish and not realise that if he avoided his mistakes and concentrated on his successes his life would be a different life, and not his own life at all. Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote of it in his " The Old Man Dreams." He longs to be a bright-hair'd boy, free from learning's crown; he wants his life-blood to stream from boyhood's fount of flame, and there are other desires to tho samo effect. But his listening angel asks him if there is nothing he wants 011 the way back to arrest his flight toward youth. The old man feels ho cannot put up with even boyhood without his precious wife. So tho angel writes with a sapphire pen dipped in rainbow dew: The man would bo a boy again, And bo a. husband, too! The angel questions him as to any other parts of his life he would like to keep before the years dissolved. The old man finds lie just cannot bear to be without his fond parental joys, and says that ho would take his girl and boys. Tho smiling angel dropp'd his pen; " Why, this will never do; The man would bo a boy again, And be a father, tool" Foreknowledge and Tragedy Olio of the tragedies of the life of Jesus on earth was that He knew the future. As a child I always thought that the tale of His last supper, when He sat surrounded by His disciples and knew that one was to deny Him and one was to betray Him, was tho saddest in the world. I puzzled over it, and when I finally realised that Ho really and truly did know what was going to happen, I was miserable for days. And it was then that I grasped the difference between Jesus and ordinary people. And 111 my little heart I was glad that ordinary people did not —could not —know their future. For the future of Jesus was so terrible that even as a child I could understand what it must have meant to Him; and He was powerless to rearrange His life. He prayed, " If it bo possible." It was impossible. There are somfl rash people who appeal to Shakespeare for advice in their problems; "Sortes from William" the irreverent call it. A young friend of mine declares that oneo when her little boy was ill and the doctor could not be reached, she asked for William's advice, not once, but twice. By some coincidence the advice was given twice from "King John." The first timo William told hor to Put but a little water in a spgon, and he continued: Then pauso not; for the present time's so sick That present medicine must be minister'd. " I tell the tale as 'twas told to me." At all events, my friend gave her child some medicine and made him sip water out of a spoon, and all went well. Folly oi Soothsaying 1 expect all my readers know how to deal with Shakespeare if they want information. Ask the question in a low tone, have a black-headed pin in the right hand, open Shakespeare at random, with the eyes closed, and, still with the eyes closed, stick the pin, also at random, somewhere on the page. If the pin lands in tho middle of a list of characters, or on a spot without any print, so much tho worse for the pin-sticker; only two chances are allowed by Shakespeare at a time. I am told by those who deal in his "Sortes" that he is really not much in favour of helping his questioners at tho best of times. I do not wonder, for in his own works he disapproves strongly of those who try to future-peer. But it is all so meaningless, so hopeless, so stupid. No young man ever was appointed to any post because ho showed his horoscope and explained that a soothsayer had just told him that lie was born to early honours and early wealth, achieved by his own unaided efforts. He would be turned down with a polite rendering of " swelled head." Imagine Napoleon having anything to do with somebody who pressed his application by references to his brilliant future. " Qu'est ce qu'il a fait?" you remember, was his invariable question." What has he done?" And the answer to that lies in the lips of no soothsayers. What is needed is not a view of the future —what would wo do with it if we had it, except groan or cheer?— but the serenity, the strength, the courage to face " the future all unknown " and to realise that as the past has made the present, so the present makes the future. " And the rest is with God."