As the years go on, what one begins to perceive about so many people is that somehow or other the mind does not grow, the view does not alter; life ceases to be a pilgrimage, and becomes a journey, like a horse pulling a farm-cart. He is pulling something, because he has to pull it, but he does not care much what it is - turnips, hay, or manure! If he thinks at all, he thinks of the stable and the manger.
The middle-aged do not try experiments, they lose all sense of adventure. They make the usual kind of fortifications for themselves, they pile up a shelter out of their prejudices and stony opinions. It is securely out of the wind and rain, and new questions and ideas are safely excluded. The landscape is so familiar that the entrenched spirit does not even think about it, or care what lies behind the hill or across the river.
Now of course I do not mean that people can or should play fast and loose with life, I am speaking here solely of the possible adventures of mind and soul.
We ought to ask ourselves why we believe what we take for granted, and even if we do really believe it at all. We ought not to condemn people who do not move along the same lines of thought, we ought to change our minds a good deal, not out of mere novelty, but because of experience.
We ought not to think too much of the importance of what we are doing, and still less the importance of what we have done.
We ought to find a common ground on which to meet distasteful people; we ought to labor hard against self-pity as well as against self-applause.
Above all, we ought to believe that we can do something to change ourselves, if we only try; that we can anchor our conscience to a responsibility and our faith in Christ and understand that the society of certain people, the reading of certain books, does affect us and make our mind grow and germinate, and give us a sense of something fine and significant in life.
The wonderful thing about prayerful thought is that it's like a captive Hot Air Ballon, which is anchored in one's garden. It is possible to climb into it and to cast adrift; but so many people seem to end by pulling the balloon in, letting out the gas, and packing the whole thing away in a shed.
What I here suggest has nothing whatever that is unpractical about it; it is only a deeper foresight, a more prudent wisdom. We must say to ourselves that whatever happens, the soul shall not be atrophied; and we should be as anxious about it, if we find that it is losing its zest and freedom, as we should be if we found that the body were losing its appetite.
It may be that we shall have to build slowly, and we may have to change the design many times; but it will be all built our of our own faith, mind and hope, as the nautilus evolves its shell. In so doing we find our spirit is built out of delight. It is delight that we must follow, everything that brims the channel of life, stimulates, freshens, enlivens, tantalizes and attracts. It must at all costs be beautiful. It must embrace that part of religion that glows for us, the thing which we find beautiful in other souls and the interests we hanker after.
It is by meeting the larger spirit that lies behind life, recognizing the impulse which meets us in a thousand forms, which forces us not to be content with narrow and petty things, but emerges as the energy, whatever it is, that pushes through the crust of life, as the flower pushes through the mould. How barren life is without it.
We must aim then at fulness of life; not at managing our resources with meagre economy, but at spending generously and fearlessly, grasping experience firmly, nurturing zest and hope."
Arthur Benson excerpts from his book "Joyous Gard."
