WHEN LIFE BEGINS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21539, 11 January 1932, Page 11

WHEN LIFE BEGINS

THIRTY THE GOLDEN AGE All ages are dangerous ages. But there are also good and bad ages; good, better, and best ages (writes Sylvia Thompson, in the Daily Mail). Indeed, apart from a common dangerousness the ages and stages of life have a startling difference of quality—so much so that it sometimes seems absurd to be responsible for the acts of that other creature of three, five, 10 years ago. There must be few people who aren t filled with a mixture of shame and amazement at things they did when they were 18; opinions they held at 20: situations they became involved in at 25. There exists a good deal of platitudinous superstitution about the advantages of youth. Youth spelt with a capital, regretted, sentimentalised. Among women the epitome of this youthfulness is referred to as “being eighteen”; while tedious old men decide to be “lads of twenty ” again, with a vacuous “ bonhomie ” which makes the hearer rejoice that they cannot, indeed, go into reverse as they sight their fourscore and ten. In fact, there are disadvantages in being 18, 20, and even a few. years more, and many modifications to the theory of the fine, careless rapture of one’s early years. As one can often observe, and easily remember, and as there are many dragons in the path of a good many of the young will admit, the early twenties, which seem to slink away as 30 comes in sight. Inexperience, uncertainty of purpose, shyness, or over-conceit, fantastic optimism or dramatic pessimism haunt the steps of youth, while a hundred small ambitions and desires, schemes and regrets, plague its spirit. In youth a sensitive character is most defenceless —quickly and deeply hurt and very slow in recovery. A conceited character is most tedious, a noisy individual most clamorous, while clever and able people seem more remarkable for the defects of their qualities than for the qualities that make them remarkable later on.

As for charm, a girl who is pretty at 18 is usually ravishing at 30. A girl who is i)lain at 18 is often attractive—even beautiful—lo years later; while youths whom no one but their mothers and their contemporaries found bearable at 20 develop into men with manners and characters during the next 10 years. I was lately discusisng this matter of age with some contemporaries—all of whom would either be 30 within the next few years or had already achieved 30. One asked: “What does it feel like to be 30? Is it depressing? Do the twenties suddenly seem a golden and irrecoverable epoch?” The general opinion that emerged from this discussion was that, in fact, at about this age one begins to feel most able to _ deal with life and therefore to enjoy it.