How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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cure of an anxiety neurosis of eight years’ standing, and
he answered, “ Doctor, you are the first person I have met
for ten years who made a noise like a human being.”
I knew that this patient had ^iot listened very hard and
asked him to explain more fully. He answered, “ Well,
you’re the first man I have met who could listen to a man’s
story for an hour without trying to pin a label on him or
hurl a sermon at him.”
This brings us to the consideration of the tendency of
most human beings to secure themselves in their judgment
and in their own self-esteem by making snap judgments
of their fellows, and thinking that, because they have
labelled another a snob, or a cad, a good fellow, or a
bounder, they have understood him. Everyone runs across
other people who seem to be acting in an inconsequential
or even insane fashion. The first impulse is to damn
that which we cannot understand, and this impulse is
probably at the basis of many of the persecutions, wars,
and abuses of human rights we read about in history.
It seems far better to reserve and suspend judgment
on any questionable case until we are in possession of
more facts. And, in any case, the happy human being
identifies himself so far as he is able with any freak he
meets and says, “ Now, in what circumstances, and to
what end, should I be doing exactly the same thing ? ”
We must realize that everyone is trying to be a super¬
man according to his own interpretation of the facts. It
does not help either our understanding, or our influence
on these people if we rashly put them in this, that, or the
other fixed category, and believe that, because we have
labelled them, we have understood and mastered their
personalities.
A great many people go through life with the firm
conviction that men are dishonest and bad, and that, when
you find a person who is ostensibly good, he is being good
for some ulterior motive. However true this may be in
individual cases, from a practical point of view this
philosophic attitude of misanthropy and mistrust is false
and dangerous. That there are cheats and crooks goes