Shall I Enter?

I AM in the early twenties — a graduate of one of the country’s most ‘fashionable’ preparatory schools and one of the ‘big three’ universities. I come from a family composed entirely of lawyers or business men. My environment has been as conventional as my talents. I am married and have one child, but I have an income sufficient for our desires provided they are kept within reasonable bounds. My natural course of action, one which my family and my friends would be horrified not to see me take, would be to enter either law or business. Shall I?

I have turned the problem over in my mind vainly for months, unable to arrive at a decision. One side of my nature vehemently urges me to live my life as it conceives it might be led most fully; that is, by turning my back on business and giving myself time to observe, read, think, and develop. It is the side of my nature of which the device is Savoir vivre, a glorious motto which it seems to me is almost obsolete in the business America of to-day.

But the other side of me, sprung from and nurtured by the environment in which I have lived, regards such a life as the province of poets, of whom I am not one, or of impractical fools, of whom it shudderingly suspects I am one. When this side of me is uppermost , even a life of teaching, which I am most seriously considering, seems an evasion of the battle of life which every virile man should enter.

So it was with peculiar interest that I read in the Contributors’ Club of the July Atlantic the article entitled ‘Shall I Retire?’ I am more fortunate than the gentleman who wrote it, for I may make the right decision earlier than he.

Whereas, however, if his article fairly reflects his whole feeling in the matter, he knows definitely that he wants to get out of the rush of the business world and is only invoking the courage to do so, I am not sure of what I want to do. For while my savoir vivre side cheers in sympathy with what he has to say, my ‘conventional’ side just as enthusiastically rebels at it.

The gentleman mentions that if he clings to his business it is to avoid ridicule, and he feels that it is a shabby reason. But is it not a more valid argument than he assumes it is? No matter how much he may pride himself on his courage, an ordinary man brought up in the gregarious atmosphere of to-day will be unhappy if he sets himself at odds with his friends and his environment. More especially he will be unhappy because of the ridicule he will turn upon himself. Life, as he has conceived it since childhood, will be going on without him and he will sneer at his own inactivity. He will see men about him still ‘doing things’ and he will see men he despises ‘shirking life’ like himself. And he will forget that the picture has a reverse side.

We are living in an age of go-getters, however much we may deplore the type, and we are so infected with the spirit of the age that we are not happy if we are different. It may be sad, but it is true. Our control over our psychological reactions is feeble at best; to take them into account as we do more tangible pros and cons is not cowardly.

There is another phase of the problem, at base psychological also, which it seems to me must be considered. That is the Anglo-Saxon desire for concrete achievement. We are essentially a practical race; pure poets are rare. Even those most sensitive to nature and beauty, the surface Shelleys of our contemporary life, have often far more common sense than they realize. Art for art’s sake seems nonsense to the majority of them, though they will not all admit it. So a life devoted exclusively to intangible spiritual ideals, while enticing, might lose its savor in the end.

It must be remembered that I am setting forth only one aspect of one side of the problem. I have neglected entirely the other half of the picture, the seductive call of the savoir vivre which the retiring gentleman has already championed much more convincingly than I could. Our personalities are both in conflict with the spirit of our age. The only question is whether, in the end, the greatest happiness will be found in acquiescence or rebellion. There have, however, been nonconformists before, and, in spite of my ingenious argument, I am told that they were happy men.