Lebanese Breeze

People get from books the idea that if you have married the right
person you may expect to go on “being in love” for ever. As a result, when
they find they are not, they think this proves they have made a mistake and
are entitled to a change-not realising that, when they have changed, the
glamour will presently go out of the new love just as it went out of the old
one. In this department of life, as in every other, thrills come at the
beginning and do not last. The sort of thrill a boy has at the first idea of
flying will not go on when he has joined the R.A.F. and is really learning
to fly. The thrill you feel on first seeing some delightful place dies away
when you really go to live there. Does this mean it would be better not to
learn to fly and not to live in the beautiful place? By no means. In both
cases, if you go through with it, the dying away of the first thrill will be
compensated for by a quieter and more lasting kind of interest. What is more
(and I can hardly find words to tell you how important I think this), it is
just the people who are ready to submit to the loss of the thrill and settle
down to the sober interest, who are then most likely to meet new thrills in
some quite different direction. The man who has learned to fly and becomes a
good pilot will suddenly discover music; the man who has settled down to
live in the beauty spot will discover gardening.
This is, I think, one little part of what Christ meant by saying that a
thing will not really live unless it first dies. It is simply no good trying
to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill
go-let it die away-go on through that period of death into the quieter
interest and happiness that follow -and you will find you are living in a
world of new thrills all the time. But if you decide to make thrills your
regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker
and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old
man for the rest of your life. It is because so few people understand this
that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost
youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors
opening all round them.