approach to a more normal mental sense of proportion is a keener
recognition of the want. But this want must be found first in
ourselves, not in others. There is the inclination to regard our own
life as bigger and more important than the life of any one about us;
or the reverse attitude of bewailing its lack of importance, which
is quite the same. In either case our own life is dwelt upon first.
Then there is the immediate family, after that our own especial
friends,--all assuming a gigantic size which puts quite out of the
question an occasional bird's-eye view of the world in general. Even
objects which might be in the middle distance of a less extended
view are quite screened by the exaggerated size of those which seem
to concern us most immediately.

One's own life is important; one's own family and friends are
important, very, when taken in their true proportion. One should
surely be able to look upon one's own brothers and sisters as if
they were the brothers and sisters of another, and to regard the
brothers and sisters of another as one's own. Singularly, too, real
appreciation of and sympathy with one's own grows with this broader
sense of relationship. In no way is this sense shown more clearly
than by a mother who has the breadth and the strength to look upon
her own children as if they belonged to some one else, and upon the
children of others as if they belonged to her. But the triviality of
magnifying one's own out of all proportion has not yet been
recognized by many.

So every trivial happening in our own lives or the lives of those
connected with us is exaggerated, and we keep ourselves and others
in a chronic state of contraction accordingly.