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Middle age has its compensations. Youth is bound hand and foot with the shackles of public opinion. Middle age enjoys freedom.I remember that when i left the school i said to myself: __1
"Hence forward. I can get up when i like and go to bed when i like." That of course was an exaggeration, and i soon found that whenever you have an aim you must sacrifice something of freedom to achieve it. But by the time you have reached middle age you discovered how __2
much freedom it was worth to sacrifice in order to achieve any aim that __3
you have on view. When i was a boy i was tortured by shyness, __4
and middle age has to a great extent brought me a relief of this. I __5
have now no such feeling and i save myself much discomfort. I always hated cold water, but for many years i bath in cold seas because __6
i wanted to be like everybody. __7
It was until quite late in life that i discovered how easy it was __8
to say:"i don't know." i find with middle age no one expects me to walk twenty-five miles, or to play a scratch game of golf, or to dive from a height of thirty feet. This is all to the good and makes life pleasant, but i should no longer care if they do. That is what makes __9
youth unhappy, the vehement anxiety to be like other people, and that is what makes middle age intolerable, the reconciliation with oneself.__10
