How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
375/400

youth. How can one be happy, then, looking always at the lost paradise of youth and denying the reality for which we were created ? This problem is the more pressing because more and more people grow to a ripe old age nowadays than ever before. The Uses of Leisure and Adversity Modern medicine has increased the span of life, and the economic structure of society has lessened the number of working hours and increased the number of enforced holidays. If we do not simultaneously increase our interest in living, it would really be better to scrap our public health activities and let men and women die in the height of their maturity. Too many people live as if their lives were to be snuffed out at fifty. And while they may make certain provisions for their animal care by taking out insurance policies when they are young, they seldom take out mental insurance in the form of a lively investment in the cultural and artistic activities which give life its fullest meaning. The problem of making adequate use of leisure no longer affects only the plutocrat. The machine age has made it every man’s problem. The dim realization that we live longer and have more leisure has stimulated that excellent movement known as adult education. In the old paternalistic and authoritarian cultures, school was an unpleasant period of stupid preparations to take examinations and get a diploma. As soon as the diploma was properly framed, education ceased. But the artist in living must never stop learning. The man who would grow old gracefully must be constantly fortifying himself with new ideas and new interests. You cannot coast through life on the momentum of a school or college education. Life teaches us much, but we must learn and learn and learn. To stop, even for a moment, in the pursuit of knowledge and in the search for new and greater aware¬ ness is to bring mental death closer. We petrify all too soon. We can at least protract our personal usefulness