The point in this cycle at which the chief obstacles to the growth of persons are encountered is the second step--the denial of one’s accumulated self. The chief hindrances are emotional. They are fear of the unknown, and reaching after utter security (which in fact one never experiences until one ceases to grasp after it); pride (which does one the dishonor of identifying oneself with one’s possessions or products); sensitiveness to opposition or contradiction (which easily becomes either pugnacity, or argumentativeness, or smartness, or the habit of being on the defensive); and indolent contentment with the merely good, coupled with only languid approval of the better. In all these states the self withdraws from actuality, covering its eyes as if they could not bear the light. Consequently, a prime necessity, if we are to be released from bondage to self, is the attainment of objectivity, particularly objectivity towards our own sensitive points. There are several trails that lead into or at least towards this fruitful mountain valley. The scientific study of man helps; learning what others think about us helps; a third trail, which is the least laborious and painful, is laughter. I mean the laughter, not of scorn or derision, but of humorous sympathy. Put yourself into some funny classification, even if it be only partly or remotely true, and lo, you are playing with yourself instead of making of your little self such a dreadfully serious matter! Humor in this sense--not the biting-dog sense--is a method of objectivity or truth-finding. It has a wondrous capacity to make small things look small, and large things large. “Just think, mother!” a humorous magazine makes a freshly graduated collegian say, as he holds up his “sheepskin,” “Now I’m an educated man!” Genial humor, moreover, is a normal expression of confidence in the meaningfulness of life. When I laugh good-humoredly at my own foibles I as much as say, “I wasn’t all there, was I?” When Immanuel Kant, who was less than five feet tall, stumbled and fell, he rose smiling, saying that it was no matter, he wasn’t tall enough to fall far! The meaning of comedy is that we look straight at the incongruities in ourselves without being abashed or losing our self-respect--_we_ are free and happy in spite of our blunders, more free and happy because we do not dodge the fact of our blundering. The stage comedy that we enjoy most is the one that most completely hits off the characteristic foibles of humanity in the large, that is of us the spectators. Here we play with our selfhood, see deeper into it, and renew our confidence that we can be rational. Man is like a bear in a cage, says Robert Frost--so different from a bear freely roaming, so ridiculous, yet ... But see for yourself how humor without acerbity works. THE BEAR By Robert Frost