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The Way We Go Ins And Outs Of Life

Told By Leo Fanning

One trouble with democracy in many countries is that live issues are often too much wrapped up in dead tissues of words, and principles of government are mazed and hazed in phrases. There is a stupendous faith in a formula until it is exploded and replaced by another formula which attracts similar faith until it suffers the same fate.

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When a man is old enough to remember well the ways of other days, but is not too old for an active interest in the new order, life can have for him a very pleasant richness, even if his deposits and withdrawals at the bank cause no excitement in financial circles.

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Of course there is no average man; still less is there an average woman. Each is sure that he or she has within himself or herself certain ability, certain power, which, if properly recognised and appreciated, would work wonders. “Some people have all the luck,” sighs the average man or woman. “If only I had the chance, what ….?” But it is not necessary to fill in the blank. Have we not all felt what the world has missed by not fully exploiting our undeveloped resources?

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There is a common nonsensical saying to the effect that any man can be replaced. If there is one truth that impresses a reader of history more than any other fact it is one-man power or influence as against mass influence. When masses are left to their own guidance they make messes. Even when masses obtain great power the result is always traceable to a mighty leader. What would be the state and balance of power to-day if there had been no Napoleon? Go further back. What would be the position now if there had been no Julius CaEsar? If his legions had not penetrated as far as Britain what would have been the subsequent history of Britain? Thus you can go on “ifing” with many famous names of Europe, Asia, and America.

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An old proverb of many nations alleges it is the unexpected that happens. This is a warning that we must look for surprises—and we do. Who is not hoping for them? The right kind, of course, for unpleasant surprises are, alas, too frequent and persistent. When things are going well, you must be on guard against a surprise—the hidden, insidious borer that turns your timber into dust.

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Our pleasantest surprises are in our reveries and dreams. Life may not give us the joyous surprises of our hopes and merits, but by taking thought we can add cubits of stature to our importance in the scheme of things as we see them—in the fireside armchair or in bed. When the plodding Dodderson has been passed in the course of fortune by his old school-fellow, the proud Purseval, and has been cut by the money magnate and snubbed by his expensively-furred fat wife, icily lorgnetted by her from her luxurious car, he has no meek and mild acceptance of his fate. He has a vision of himself as one who will overwhelm them with a terrific surprise some day, if the luck will only come his way.

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Of course the old world always has loved spectacular successes in money-making feats of page 48 arms, sword-swallowing, aeroplaning, and so on—and the public naturally will be always most easily moved by things which bulk up easily to the eye or the imagination. Anybody can see at once the world-greatness of a marvellous footballer or a beautifully-limbed ballet dancer, but not everybody can see the inner meaning and feel the charm of a real poem. Indeed, the poet himself may be at a loss in this matter, and may be much astonished by the varying beliefs and opinions of his handful of admirers.

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Much of our life is spent in telling one another what we already know, or in asking our fellow-creatures to say aye-aye to our sentiments, opinions, prejudice, or nonsense. Morning, afternoon, and evening we remind one another philosophically that two and two are four, or twice two is four, which we sometimes vary to 3 plus 1, or 2 ½ plus 1 ½, or 5 minus 1.

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Undergraduates of any University busy themselves fervently in various schemes, by fits and starts, to change this old world for the better. They look about them and see a welter of things crying for reformation. They see Governments, Local Bodies, Boards and other corporations as conglomerates of stodge, and they yearn to put idealist spirit into the beef—but in due time most of them become beefy themselves—butts for the slings and arrows of another generation of undergraduates (including their own sons).

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Live to laugh, and laugh to live—laugh anyhow. That is the kind of advice which we give to one another, in various proverbial sayings, such as “Laugh and grow fat,” “All the world loves a laugher” (even if he is only an amusing loafer). Anybody who knows how to make the world laugh will never be short of a loaf and a cup of sack or cocoa.

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“Women are like sheep in following the fashions,” a thoughtless man may say, forgetting for the moment that man is much more a slave of fashion than woman is. Certainly, if woman is a she-sheep in that field, man is emphatically a he-sheep, if not a he-goat. The tubes of tweed have their ebbs and flows; the coat tails have their ups and downs; the bowlers have various bulges from one season to another—and so it goes on also with ties, shirts, socks and shoes. The difference between the sexes in the matter of fashion is not so much in degree as in conspicuousness. There is not enough flash in the fashions for men.

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There is not enough of the carnival spirit nowadays, not enough pageantry. In days of old the monarchs knew the value of an occasional merry time for the public. This jollity delayed the evolution of the popular franchise, but it was worth it. Plenty of people to-day feel that it is hardly worth while to be motored to a polling place, but they would all turn out on foot for a revival of decent frolics. Of course, there are “high jinks” in some cabarets, but that excitement is out of the public eye and ear, and the only news of it comes from a curate or canon who thunders at it occasionally. “Community singing” was an attempt to restore the old community joyfulness, but you cannot command the people to sing. Give them the right kind of thrills, and they will sing all right.

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Repetition gradually makes some difficult tasks easy—but there are always exceptions. Plenty of folk find that the irritating iteration of the bed-quitting business in the morning does not make it any easier as the years go by.

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Some of us are patient by nature, and others by policy. Hard is the fate of the man whose disposition is explosive when circumstances compel him to repress himself constantly, when his impulse is to swear he may have to smile, and when he has a burning eagerness to kick he may have to offer cake.

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“This is the Age of Interruption,” a philosophic friend remarked sadly to me the other day. “Whatever you wish or try to do or say, something or somebody butts in or cuts in. I went home the other evening, sober, full of noble thought. My wife had complained that I was too much wrapped up in myself, too quietly meditative, not talkative enough. Well, I resolved to make amends. I was speaking fruitily—I knew I was—about men and things, but in the midst of my most sparkling sentence, my wife said, prosily—‘Yes, yes—but did you remember to bring home the sausages'?”

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New Zealanders know more of the world than the world knows of itself. There is a proverbial saying about going away from home to get the news of home. Well, the world has to come to New Zealand to get a proper view of itself. These islands, peacefully apart from the continents, are the mustering place of the world's news. Thousands of visitors from Europe and America have remarked that the papers here have more news of the wide world, set in better perspective, than their contemporaries of older countries.

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