IN T. S.Eliot's The Cocktail Party, a Broadway success eight seasons ago, a middle-aged character complains to an acquaintance: "I am obsessed by the thought of my own insignificance." His friend, a psychiatrist who understands him well, poetically replies:
Precisely. And I could make you feel
mportant,
And you would imagine it a marvellous cure;
And you would go on, doing such
amount of mischief
As lay within your power—until you
came to grief.
Half of the harm that is done in
this world
Is due to people who want to feel
important.
For a fine example of life imitating art, see the Cover Story in NATIONAL AFFAIRS,...
