How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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training for our goal, and the manner of this training is
an interesting chapter in the understanding of human
nature. When a dramatic incident occurs and someone
rises to the emergency, he has prepared for that emergency
either in his imagination or in the actual conduct of his
life. The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields
of Eton. It is for this reason that revolutions whose time
has come never lack for leaders, just as the religions
required by a certain epoch never want for prophets.
Men and women are constantly training themselves to
be leaders, prophets, martyrs, organizers, explorers,
experimenters, and the like. It is part of the process of
training themselves for their individual goal in life, and
when the historical situation appropriate to their goal
presents itself, they are ready. This unconscious and
conscious training must be understood if we are to be
effective human beings, and it must be properly mobilized
if we are to lead happy lives.
In the development of a normal personality, the original
sense of inferiority is overcome by a process of conscious
training and growth until, with maturity, the normal
individual is ready to contribute whatever power and
technique he has developed during the first period of his
life (the period of individuation) to the greater welfare
of the race. The conquest of obstacles on the way gives
him a sense of security and poise which are the premisses
of a useful maturity. His early experiences within his
family have provided the initiation into the fellowship
of mankind that enables him, when he is mature, to turn
his efforts to the human cause. In the course of his
progress he has trained himself to be courageous, to be
objective, to be kindly, to cooperate, and to contribute
and to look on his own efforts with a certain sense of
humour.
We have shown in previous paragraphs that the
individual’s goal is always delimited by the particular
and specifically individual form of the feeling of inferiority
he experienced as a child. We have shown, moreover,
that the pattern of any personality is a unified dynamic