How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.

refuses to meet his problems in a responsible or objective fashion. But he excuses himself by saying : “You must not expect too much of me. You see, I have to go about . on stilts all the time.,, t This excuse satisfies some of his opponents some of the time, but eventually others appear who refuse to believe in the inexorable nature of Mr. Q.’s compulsion, because it is perfectly evident that Mr. Q. can walk on the ground like anybody else if he wishes. This leads to conflicts with society and a further discouragement of Mr. Q., who bears his cross very cheerfully so long as it absolves him from competition. In order that Mr. Q.’s stilts-neurosis shall work, he must wear the stilts at all times, for otherwise people might accuse him of bad manners or malingering, and, if they could prove their contention that Mr. Q, could walk as well as they, and was really entitled to no special privileges, he would be compelled to retire discomfited from the scene. Therefore, when Mr. Q. met the girl he would have liked to marry, his stilts were a great annoyance. When, moreover, he was offered a much better position in an office situated at the top of a building, whose small lifts would not accommodate his stilts, the subjective solace of his stilts became very costly. In other words, Mr. Q., who chose his stilts to avoid the chance of failure in competition, and the responsibility of meeting the world on ordinary terms, suddenly finds that he is responsible to his neurosis, and that in the last analysis the responsibility to his stilts is more burdensome and oppressive than the risk of open competition. The point in describing this bizarre neurosis is that no neurosis works for ever. You cannot fool yourself and the whole world all the time. While it is true that any neurosis effectively absolves a neurotic from certain obligations and responsibilities, it is equally true that it entails its own obligations and responsibilities which are more onerous than those which the neurotic is attempting to evade. There are only four possible ends which the neurosis can serve—i, temporary excuse for failure ;