Middle age has its compensations. Youth is bound h...
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 __10__oneself.