“M.Y.O.B,”

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17570, 22 June 1925, Page 7

“M.Y.0.8,”

When one schoolboy is under the impression that another is interfering unwarrantably with his affairs, he administers the terse admonition, “ M.Y.0.8.,” which the offender has no difficulty in interpreting as “ Mind your own business.” It is a wholesome reproof, as a rule, and one that we might all take to heart if wc would secure popularit\’ and happiness. Recently a centenarian was asked for her recipe for longevity, and she gave it as “minding one's, own business and thinking kind thoughts.” This amounted to a principle of j keeping the mind in a wholesome apd, ; therefore, healthy condition, and, as this must scientifically react to produce j a wholesome and healthy physical state, she was unconscious!v a philosopher on the most advanced lines presented by up-to-date psychologists. The woman who really minds her own business excludes the mental dust that comes from sweeping other people's intellectual carpets: she keeps her own sweet and clean, and vitality in every direction is the inevitable consequence. That the average longevity of the individual is higher to-day than it was a century ago is no doubt largely due to the fact that, since we lead a wider, freer life than was possible to women in the past, our brains tend to concern themselves with things other than our neighbours' affairs—things that have no connection with the censorious or the malicious. Such preoccupations are life-giving in their natural interest, and tend to prolong our existence rather than to atrophy it. Keeping the mind unclogged with the personal affairs cf other folk has the same effect as keeping the city in sanitary, cleanly condition. It is the intellectual sanitation that both the schoolboy and the centenarian have in mind.