AKING THE MOST OF LIFE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19346, 27 June 1925, Page 14

AKING THE MOST OF LIFE

w << All adults may be divided into three classes. 2 “First, those who are very keen on ahe work by which they earn their living who run to this work as the bride--groom to the bride, and leave it with even more reluctance than the bridegroom leaves the bride,” writes Mr. Arnold Bennett, the well-known novelist, in the Sunday Pictorial. “Second, those who are . not keen on their work, starting it with reluctance and quitting, it with a sigh of relief. Third, those who do not have to work regularly for a living— la large slass. The first class, concentrating on their master-passion, detest spare lime and become narrow through over-concen-tration. The second class have usually plenty of spare time, but usually fritter it away as spendthrifts fritter away money. The third class are often the busiest and the most rushed of the

! three, land find it the most difficult to organise—simply because they have no discipline. k “But all three classes are alike in the excellent desire to live more calmly and more fully. And all throe class1 es shoud treat themselves in the same » way, for all three will cry out with the same voire; *1 have no time for widen1 ing my life. I cannot make time/ “Well, of course, we cannot any of • use make time. Time is a fixed quantity. 7 “There is, however, more time at our disposal than we generally suppose. A . r.i’an, for instance, will assert with sinhas no time to rend. Yet if that man ' !has not time to read. Yet if that man ■ (happens on a long book that anthrals | him he will somehow discover time to • i read it in the spare time of half a I week! Proof enough that he had been ■ ;under-estimating his spare time! ' ‘ “The problem is, not to make time, I but to arrange time. Bad time-habits must be broken. They can only be broken by ruthless methods, for it is ■ far easier to break a good habit than

a bad one. The members of the first class must ruthlessly limit the ■ exactions of their master passion—a difficult undertaking, but they have the immense advantage of self discipline already acquired. “The spare time of the second class is encumbered with a litter of disconnected trifles, which must be ruthlessly swept up to make a clear space for some regular activity. They have some self-discipline to help them. “The whole life of the third class is n horrid mess of time-extravagance and waste. They have rich resources of time, but lack the self-discipline to .utilise those resources. • “The greatest danger of the three classes is—to wait. We all say: ‘When I have drawn level, when I have put everything into order, then I will make a start? Ridiculous, because not ruthless! “Chop, uproot, sweep away—something, anything, no matter what, at once; but make la space! Something I must go, something must suffer; in I every life there is. as a rule, only one

thing that is important; and of the others it doesn’t matter much which is ruthlessly sentenced to the rubbish heap.

“A maximum in ruthlessness. Let us not be too ambitions in clearing a space. We are apt to say sadly: ‘Ah! Unless I could get two clear hours every day I could do nothing.’ Not so. With a little space here and a ittle space there, one can do a lot. Ylso, cross out the phrase ‘every day,’ and insert ‘every week.’ “Seven hours a week is the cquivtalent of one hour a day, and is easier to manage. The hazards of dailiness may ruin any given day, land if the self-imposed rule has been ‘every day,’ one is thereby normally damaged. But a week affords opportunity for recovery without shame.

“And now you complain: ‘But he has not said a word about employing the time which we are to arrange for! ’ Of course I have not. Everybody has private ambitions towards a wider and fuller life. And no two ambitions arc quite (alike. “Some want to acquire knowledge some wisdom, some skill, some improved health. Each must search his own mind. The choice is vast. Some things are better than others; but none is bad.”