The first item in the ideal state of being for man is I am. Shakespeare was quite correct with his question, “To be or not to be?” When a man is trying to make a decision, that decision breaks down into a matter of choosing one of two courses: to be or not to be. The highest level of the desirable state is I am—no doubts of the advisability of being, no qualms about the future. The lowest level on a survival course would be I am not. In between we have the doubts and writhing and indecisions of the weary, the angry, the frightened. When a man has made up his mind as to a course, he is only then comfortable. So long as he hangs in a maybe on any decision he is uncomfortable. In any course there are just two decisions possible, to assume a state of being or to assume a state of not-beingness.

And here we have the matter of gradient scales. Successes are little bits of living. Failures are little bits of death. Like the battle that was lost all for the loss of a horseshoe nail, a small failure can begin a series of failures which end in actual death. Not that death is very important, besides being painful, but that one tends, then, to give a very heavy weight to failures.

The ideal state of being could be said to be wholly successful in all things. This is opposed by being so unsuccessful that one is dead.

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