After youth comes the stage of middle age. Middle age is the time when one has gathered knowledge, when one has experienced life, when one has gone through joy and sorrow, when one has learnt lessons from one's profession, from one's occupation, from one's home, from every side of life. It is the opportunity? to make the best use of what one has gathered by experience.

But what generally happens is what Sa'di, the Persian poet says, "O my self, you have come to middle age, and yet you are no better than a child!"

If a person has not learnt by that time all he ought to learn, he has indeed lost life's opportunity. Because it is that age during which he earns not only money, but experience and knowledge; and the more he has learnt, the richer he is at that time, and the better he knows how to make use of what powers he has, the more successful and fruitful he becomes.

Besides that is the age when one begins to know life's obligations, and if one does not know them even then, one has not learnt anything. To know one's obligation towards those who look up to one, who surround one, who expect some help, some advice, some service from one, that is the time when one must be conscious of these things. It is the beautiful age when the tree comes to full maturity, when it begins to give fruit to the world. Not only is this the time for the singer when his voice is in full blossom, not only is this the time for the artist or the thinker when he can express himself fully, but for every person that age is the promise of the ripened mind expressing itself to the best advantage; and if that opportunity is not taken then man has missed a great deal in life.