A ROOM OF OUR OWN
Follette, Isabel B. La
A Room Of Our Own By Isabel B. La Follette AFRIEND dropped in to cheer me while I was recently hors de combat but remained for aid and comfort on her own account. "You're always so cheerful,...
...Do you really think I'm just naturally cheerful...
...Rather than fighting against it, one can displace it by crowding it aside with other interests...
...I almost burst out, "How can anyone have a happy Christmas this year...
...The most important thing I've accomplished is to learn to see beyond my moods of black depression without any outside help, though I'm very young to say I've licked the problem...
...Let's take the best of care of our human and physical resources until the sap begins to run again...
...Somberly he replied, "I would give them food...
...The original Christmas theme,_"Peace on earth, goodwill toward men" was with the years overladen with the more earthy desire for "A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year," but the two should not be incompatible...
...of my un-Pollyanna-ish grim determination not t» drag down the already strained level of buoyancy in those about me...
...But prosey and unexciting as it may sound, I think there is a real challenge all about us to tackle the job of getting our human material back "on the beam...
...The atomic bomb has us all punch-drunk to the point where we are losing sight of that great reservoir of human capacity, and we sit on the sidelines watching the scientists and politicians equally aghast and apparently equally stumped for an "answer...
...This means, as I see it, that we have an even greater obligation not alone for ourselves, but for the rest of the world to meet our problems of this period creatively as an example of hope to others...
...AS I urged my troubled friend, "I know you are suffering, but I can't help feeling that a change in your own attitude would help solve some of your problems...
...I marvelled, thinking of the pain of the past four years...
...All sorts of blueprints are being offered, but until another election rolls around there is little the average person can offer or choose in an effective way...
...As I cautioned my friend, it is awfully easy to let unhap-piness become a habit...
...That is why I am so convinced that just as "charity begins at home," we must go to work on ourselves...
...IT is my feeling that the war, culminating in the shock of the atomic bomb development, has temporarily exhausted man's creative energies...
...Even if one's heart isn't in it at first, one goes through the form until some day they have suddenly taken on substance...
...On every side individuals and groups seem completely engrossed in their own problems on the farm, the factory, business, and the professions in personal terms, rather than recognizing themselves as a part of society...
...Granted that the war and the atomic bomb have shaken us to our foundations, what can you and I contribute to the general solution here and now...
...I have faith that after the strain of the war itself, we are in a period of what my mother used to call "lying fallow," and that this will be followed by a period of renewed vigor and hope...
...of the "easy tears of self-pity" restrained only by that blessing of the gods, a sense of humor...
...After the first world war a member of an Allied Commission traveling in Germany remarked to a friend of ours that they were seeing planted about them the seeds of the next war...
...I recalled too a letter from our 19-year-old son in the Philippines who wrote during a trying period, "I do feel I hit this Army at a most fortunate time and that it's been an invaluable experience, although I've hated almost every minute of it...
...Already there are significant rumblings, especially from the men who have spent the past four years in what the boys call a "Fascist state" (the Army), that "all this nonsense has got to be straightened out," and they don't mean by sweetness and light either...
...In the years ahead there will be only too few places where people will have the essentials of a decent life, as Americans think of it...
...My conviction, or perhaps intuition, of this was put to the test and strengthened during the war years...
...that the food blockade starving the children of that generation was producing warped beings who would be the future leaders in Germany...
...The older I get the more impressed I am with the potentialities of the individual...
...Tragically, even though we were able to translate our humanitarian wishes into substance for the starving peoples of the world, we might keep them alive, but their nervous systems will be marked forever...
...You're always so cheerful, Isen," she sighed...
...You have gritted your teeth to attack them head on, rather than using your head to try a creative approach...
...AS I read the ghastly news stories from around the world, I hear the children joyfully making their Christmas plans carrying out all the traditional customs as usual...
...For millions of families over the world this Winter either thought will be a bitter travesty...
...Typical is the struggle between labor and management where to the onlooker it appears that both sides have lost a sense of their relation to the whole social structure...
...My gray hairs tell me that "happiness" or "security" are not commodities which can be bestowed...
...The need for play and joy is an essential part of a normal, well-balanced being, and we should never lose sight of that aim for our citizenry...
...of the lonely, anxious hours when I faced the cold fact that the dismal soon outwear their welcome...
...I looked at her in amazement...
...They are an approach—a "way of living" if you like, and the marvellous thing is that this technique can be, if not learned, as our boy suggests, at least cultivated...
...It can be the only satisfactory basis of meeting the problems that press upon us...
...I think it is really immoral for the average American with food in his stomach, clothes on his back, a roof over his head, and freedom to choose his own values, not to rise to the opportunities about him...
...A friend from Norway visited us recently and was asked, "What would YOU do with Germany...
...As I besought my friend...
...Every decent American is constantly weighing in his mind and heart how best we can help this agonized world...
...But I swallow this emotion...
...Memories crowded of the many times I had gone on my way forcing a smile that almost cracked my face muscles...
...At least you must have put up a good front, old girl," I told myself, and again girded on my battle array to tackle my friend...
...We are troubled these days, I think, by a sense that we are not "getting anywhere" in the maze of problems that grip us...
Vol. 9 • December 1945 • No. 51
