FORTY AND TWENTY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19365, 23 July 1925, Page 2

FORTY AND TWENTY

COMPENSATIONS OF MIDDLE AGI

The passing of the years brings one sovereign compensation. When the wildly romantic dreams of Youth are dust, we no longer cry for the moon. In that dust we learn to build our solid little middle-aged castle, flying the flag of content. We find a Vast happiness in the everyday joys that Y r outh so often underestimates. Wp no longer challenge Destiny; but we learn a serenity of spirit that to us worthy all the glamour of battle tind the glory of conquest. We do not tempt the Fates too nearly. So long as they turn not the Evil Eye on uthey may keep their too poignant ecs So long as wc ar<* free from dolinile illness of mind or body, we ask not ihat they should htmd us the cornu •opia of rapturous romance. Youth demands so much, and suffers so much from Eate’s denials! .Maturity learns ;• meekness that brings its own reward. Middle age asks lit lie. and knows how to In* grateful to the. gods for what they deign to proffer. The cosy hearthstone; the companionable spun who is our contemporary in age and thought, and such beautifully mundane things as well-cooked and daintilyserved food; the folds of a familiar old dressing gown and the down softness of miraculously comfortable bed room slippers; even the ordered routine that in our Youth we cavilled at — ! a!I these ('veryday joys that have grown into our life —consciousness, as it ■wore, with our growth, become enhanced worth richer than the gold of adolescent sun. more luminous than the opal of its moonshine. At twenty forty sounds like Methuselah: At forty we 'are so sorry for twenty, and all the disillusionment* it has yet to face. Life may hold few surprises for us middle-aged folk; it may have brought us little of rapture, and loss of high adventure even in our heyday, but in middlo-*ago wc learn to hug to our hearts a simple and abiding content.