Are You A Power?

The opening sentences of a book called “Advice From a Failure,”1 brings the reader face-to-face with certain of life’s realities:

It is not an easy world to live in. It is not an easy world to be decent in. It is not an easy world to understand oneself in, nor to like oneself in.

But it must be lived in, and in the living, there is but one person you absolutely have to be with. That person is you.

But who are you and what are you — and isn’t it a pity that so many of us know more about how our automobile functions than we know about ourselves?

If someone asked you, for example, what business you are in, you might respond that you are a salesperson, a computer operator, a school teacher, a stockbroker, a truck driver, a carpenter, a mechanic, or whatever it is you do. But, in so answering you would be wrong! The business you…