• Author: Unknown
• Editor: B-7413
• Newspaper: The Umpire volume 6
• Page Number:
• Date: 7 25 1917
• Tags:
• advice

HOW TO MEET MIDDLE AGE

In a recent number of a well-known publication a writer gives some interesting and useful advice on how to meet middle age in such a manner as to insure future happiness. Among other things she says:

“To hold on to our appreciation of nature, we must spur our dull and lagging memory of Beauty; to keep our appreciation of Human Nature, we must refuse to be laid on the shelf: we must keep up with the procession of human thought. Only so we can see the sweat, the tears and smiles of our fellow- creatures.

“These are the two tasks of Middle Age. If we perform them worthily, our souls will never grow old. And plainly, it is ‘up to us,’ as these slangy youngsters of ours express it—it is up to us to keep young; to make sure that our inner vision is open to beauty; and to the joy and sorrow, the squalor and glory of our fellows. If we do this, the compensation is immediate. So what difference does it make if the body is rheumatic and near-sighted—and a little deaf when it comes to the song sparrow: what do such things matter if the eyes of the soul still see that crater mirroring the sky, if the ears of the spirit hear the bird’s note in dawn and dew? Nor does it matter that the body declines a game of tennis, and shudders at a plunge into the surf when the thermometer registers only 55 degrees—if the body’s tenant is able to say to the young people, "Go ahead! Have a good time! But take my word for it

“The best is yet to bel”