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

he cannot yet remove the annoyances of measles, friction, or rainy holidays from his scheme of things, solemnly announcing that life is a vain mistake, a meaningless, futile, and boring interlude between birth and death, is one of the ridiculous, tragic comedies born of man’s enormous egoism and his infinitesimal sense of humour. Whenever we see men who claim that life is not worth living, men who are bored, disinterested, and pre¬ dominantly and unproductively pessimistic, we are reminded forcibly of La Fontaine’s hungry but impotent fox, looking longingly at the luscious grapes beyond his reach. Show us a woman who is bored and we will show you a woman too timid or too vain to contribute. Show us a man who is surfeited with the futility of living and we will show you a cowardly, uncooperative, and unhappy human being. This technique and these tools, which are becoming more and more common because a high degree of courage and cooperation are increasingly necessary in the complex structure of modern civilization, are the choice of those who, being afraid to risk their contribution, must stand out in the cold and tell us that it is a bad play, badly written, acted by dolts and fools, to no good end. Of evasion by self-annihilation, martyrdom, suicide, a sense of guilt, or the profession of chronic inferiority we have already made mention ; and with this category of spiritual or actual self-destruction, which is the last degree of cowardice and resistance to common sense, we have sketched the various dynamic categories of approaching the tasks of life and the various tools which are appropriate to the various goals we set ourselves. What we call the normal life is no more than a courageous approach to life’s problems and the objective solution of its obstacles. All variations from the normal are compassed by the various forms of evasion—aggression, hesitation, detour, circumscription, retreat, and self- destruction. Because no one is free from certain of these evasions, every human being retains some poor or inadequate tools in the form of “ bad ” character traits.