PARADOXES OF LIFE

Waipa Post, Volume 32, Issue 1779, 6 July 1926, Page 6

PARADOXES OF LIFE

If you are lavish people say you are a spendthrift. If you practise economy you are Scotch. If we show irritation it is temperament. If others show irritation it is bad temper. What we call confidence in ourselves we call deceit in others; The epigrammatic speeches of Lord Dewar that have been appearing in the Press during the last few weeks induced a representative of the Sunday Times to ask him at the conclusion of a recent dinner how he first began to speak in public on the humorous outlook on life. Lord Dewar said: “Life is a 'paradox from the cradle to the crematorium. Through humor you can see comic things happening around you all the time, and discover that 90 per cent, of the troubles of life are imaginary.

“For example, you can see. the honest-to-goodness people who adopt a halo, and with one finger outstretched isay, ‘I am holier than thou.’ You can hear the rabid reformers in Hyde Park proclaim: ‘You, must do as you like, otherwise you will be made to,’ and that all men are equkl. Providence never meant men to be equal, except when they are asleep! “Others pay the amusements tax, but are not amused. You can find humor in those who are socially ambitious struggling to brush elbows with the socially elect. “There is humor in those who look down with an air of superiority and condescension on those who intellectually are their superiors. Some women still step off an omnibus backwards, although they have the vote today.

“Some say a man has his heart in the right place, and others think that if that is all t 6 be said for him something mu,st be wrong with his head. “Then there is tho man who comes up to you and says: ‘You don’t remember me?’ Immediately say: ‘Yes, I do. 'How is your complaint?’ He will then give a long account of the suffering he has had at some period of his life. You may be pretty certain all men have complaints and a great many grievances.

“You can see a lot of humor in the pessimist. ’He is always grumbling because there is not enough bloom to go round. Life for him is a medley of hope and despair and of crimes and of misfortunes. Sympathise with him, but don’t listen too long or you may begin to be engrossed in his troubles, which really do not exist. 'lf there were not so many bees in bonnets there would not be so many pro- and anti-socialists.”