As a rule, man lives either in lack or in excess, be it of money, know­ledge, feel­ings or any other of life's resources. When we say: I've had enough! that is hardly a symp­tom of con­tent­ment. In an age grow­ing emo­tion­ally bar­ren, we may speak of a touch defi­cit as read­ily as of a panic-sur­plus. One sens­it­ive field in which lack and excess show them­selves is self-con­fid­ence. Two dangers threaten man, the one a lack of self-con­fid­ence, the other over­con­fid­ence – each worse than the other. When, wringing your hands, you keep insist­ing I am strong, I am strong, who will believe you? And when you speak of humil­ity with your chest puffed out, people only smile at you. What lies hid­den behind the one feel­ing and the other? Behind over­con­fid­ence there is prob­ably anxi­ety, a sense of small­ness, the desire to jus­ti­fy one­self. And behind a lack of self-con­fid­ence lurk trau­mas, fail­ures, dread. Man may know full well with his reas­on that neither under­rat­ing nor over­rat­ing him­self is healthy, and yet we fall into this error again and again.

Accord­ing to a piece of East­ern wis­dom, one should neither praise nor cri­ti­cise any­one, though an excep­tion may be made to the first rule. On occa­sion one may praise, but not cri­ti­cise. Find­ing fault or cri­ti­cising is not a very lofty pur­suit, as we all know, and yet we drift into this role. But when we are praised, we are given wings, for moral recog­ni­tion is a great­er spur than mater­i­al reward. What, then, can be the basis of this wis­dom? It truly holds in a set­ting where every par­ti­cipant knows the high moral stand­ards, shares this scale of val­ues and, tak­ing on his duties, acts with full aware­ness. For one who is con­scious of his duties, the spur is not the pos­it­ive or neg­at­ive feed­back of oth­ers, but the res­ults of the great exper­i­ment with Truth.

What hap­pens if no one pays atten­tion to you? You eas­ily let your­self go, for a while per­haps you look for feed­back, and then, when you grow tired of it, you shut your­self away and eas­ily grow estranged from com­pany. As a res­ult of this men­tal seclu­sion, this decline, you may eas­ily become a nut sealed tight, its shell all but uncrack­able. And what hap­pens if every­one pays atten­tion to you? If sud­denly every­one begins to anti­cip­ate your every wish, takes your words for rev­el­a­tion and starts to deify you? It is easy to grow used to this, and you all but bathe in the atten­tion and love of oth­ers. At times, admit­tedly, it is a bur­den that your private life all but ceases and you must always be avail­able, though this is still made up for by the spur you draw from the atten­tion of those around you. But the moment you tip past the safe limit, this atten­tion sweeps you away. You can eas­ily become two-faced, begin to live a false, double life, or simply be crushed by pop­ular­ity. Out­wardly you are bound to show that life is good, while with­in the void grows ever great­er, and yes, along­side the excess, lack appears. The fêted star eas­ily becomes a shoot­ing star, and by tomor­row is for­got­ten. Handle quick and cheap atten­tion with great care! Do not believe them when they brand you worth­less, but be far more wary when they sud­denly fête you. When fate truly wishes to put someone to the test, it gives him power or pop­ular­ity. These do not change a man, they only show what he is really like.

Lack is more pain­ful, excess more dan­ger­ous. Both are states of imbal­ance, and it is worth sober­ing up from both. From a lack of self-con­fid­ence one can emerge slowly, step by step, valu­ing even small achieve­ments, with humil­ity. From over­con­fid­ence it is harder to sober up. The passing of suc­cess is more pain­ful than the passing of fail­ure. The wise com­pare suc­cess and glit­ter to mule's urine, so worth­less do they hold them. If you think too much of your­self, that is ego­ism, and if too little, that too is ego­ism, with a neg­at­ive sign. For suc­cess in life healthy self-esteem is needed, but excess­ive ego­ism is not. The philo­sophy of enough accepts just as much as is needed, not too much, not too little. You go fur­thest along the middle path.