How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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clarify the subject further if we discuss in greater detail some of the character traits that most frequently lead to unhappiness. We shall choose for further consideration vanity, ambition, jealousy, indecision, and procrastina¬ tion, conflict and the sense of guilt, perfectionism, and piety as the most outstanding and most misunderstood character traits. Vanity and Egoism Vanity, and with it egoism, conceit, self-centredness are the tools of the individualist who has not gained enough confidence and courage either to contribute to the commonweal, to cooperate with his fellows, or to follow the fundamental laws of common sense that dictate that self-preservation is best attained by alignment with society. All vain individuals are still children, emotion¬ ally. Growing up means cooperation : the voluntary assumption of social responsibilities is the only real differential point between a child and an adult. The egoist has centred his total vital energies on his own body and soul. The larger life, the happy life, demands a catholic variety in our experience and action. For this reason the dividends on the egoist’s investment in his ego are very small. Character is nourished only by exposure to the world of men, things, and ideas. The egoist, and all egoists are vain, lives according to a system of “ private logic ” in which he tries, with characteristic vanity, to refute the laws of common sense and find values and happiness in life solely in the occupa¬ tion of his ego with his own ego as object. All of us are, to some extent, egoists. The boundaries between egoism and self-esteem are sometimes very vague. Because every human being suffers from a sense of inferiority at some time or another in his life, and therefore desires a certain measure of personal pre¬ eminence and prestige, a quantum of egoism remains in every one of us, and a certain amount of human vanity will always be inseparable from the personality and