Measure of My Days Read Online Free PDF Page A

and in silence all that puzzles and pains me and to wait until the turmoil is stilled.
    H ardihood is a quality
supposedly created by difficulty, and I have always felt it to be a stimulating virtue. I like people who have it, and that must mean that I like people who have been disciplined by hardship, which is true. I find them realistic, not easily daunted, and they make few childish claims. This also means that the hardness of life I deplore creates the qualities I admire. Poverty used to seem to create morality. If you were poor you had to be selfless, uncomplaining, independent, ingenious, and courageous. Now in an age of plenty when it is felt that we should have what we want—and when this becomes a practical possibility—what happens to hardihood? Is it a disappearing virtue? I should be sorry to see it go, and very surprised if it did.
    We are told that the over-indulged child having had little hardship lacks hardihood, and the weak boy has to be violent to respect himself, so hardihood is wanted and missed. Children must still have to endure the natural rage of parents, and there is no doubt at all that parents have tosummon a wealth of hardihood to endure their children. Even plenty requires a good deal of fortitude. To organise family transport with only two cars, to find leisure or quiet in a house equipped with every machine a modern house can contain is not easy. To combine chores with responsible jobs, not to mention illness, accidents, and the new poverty of the highly paid, all this demands stamina of the highest order, for the strain of it is great. Now when so many have so much, many work harder than their for-bears. So why does having much create strain, dissatisfaction and confusion? Could it be that austerity kept life simple, simple pleasures remaining real pleasures, while plenty makes for complication, and having much leaves us sated?
    T he power to differentiate
used to be taken as the sign of a fine mind, marking the road to wisdom. Is the present longing not to have differences noted a just claim that common humanity is moreimportant than individual quality, that our resemblances are more numerous than our differences? This is the problem that confronts us, and what is the answer? Modernity demands inclusion of the weakest side, the lowest point, individually and socially. Nothing must be excluded, so where are we? Can strength encompass weakness, or will weakness undermine strength? Is our civilization falling or rising? Must we face the possibility of another dark age, sheltering the great values in our hearts until they are once more prized, or can we open to unheard of good? No answer is possible. No new pattern of living is yet clear.
    Looking out on the world I am no longer in, it feels as though we will to be undifferentiated. This must have meaning though the meaning is still hidden from us. It could be a justified recoil, loss of heart, lack of courage, remembering the last sixty years. Yet think what mankind has borne, who could plumb the valour that lies in the human heart? We must wait and hope and watch. Take note of every reflection of the generalsituation that arises in our own hearts. Assess, wait—open and aware.
    I f differentiation
has seemed part basis of morality, clarity and order, no wonder the present demand to be accepted without assessment sounds like a demand not to be judged at all. This could be a lowering of life, a recession to the inchoate, and a relinquishment of the responsibility of the individual.
    “Judge not that ye be not judged” and “Love your neighbour as yourself” make me wonder and question. Not to judge can be the result of humility and compassion, but even then we must remain clear as to what it is from which we with-hold judgement. If we do not condemn is it because we know we are not fit to do so, or is it that the necessity of value in men has become a concept of little interest? New values will not be defined in the time of the old, so we