"...it could be of no possible interest to anyone that all wisdom might be reducible to a single word."
L. Ron Hubbard
Nevertheless I achieved my own ends beautifully. I took the pressure off the boiler, oriented myself in the world, came to recognize what was important and what was not important, defined for my own use such things as morality and evil and ethics in general, and established what satisfied me as being the true psychology and religion. Evidently my word and plan worked perfectly.
Had it not been for two happenstances, I might have laid my book in my private graveyard, commemorating it with the laurel wreath for saving my own sanity. But one firm rejected it with handsome comment, another sicced a learned professor upon it who, being unable to attach the upsetting substance, attacked the syntax.
Red hair can involve a man in much trouble. I decided immediately to rewrite and properly polish my book -- two things which it certainly needed in its first, crude form -- and, what is more, publish it.
Accordingly I spent the following many months in researching my material and weighing my conclusions. Of course I turned up additional data, additional conclusions. Not wanting to follow in the track of those men professing a greater fondness for agreeable facts than disagreeable, I sturdily ransacked the libraries in an attempt to disprove what I had written -- with no success.
Gradually, however, another thing was borne steadily in upon me. Whereas I had begun the work with an earnest, even frightening ferocity, I now suffered from a reversal of feeling. Living with my own findings for so long made some very definite changes in my outlook on life. I began to find, for instance, that the possession of an "ultimate" truth not possessed by others put a stop to an old habit of dolorous introspection. The zest of living took an upper hand. I began to laugh very quietly about things which I had no business laughing about because other men take them with great seriousness. The trick of learning to laugh is a valuable possession and I was again thankful to my book. But when I began to rewrite various parts I found that the light simplicity of approach did not compare with my old draft. Of course a total re-rewrite was in order.
In truth, this book has gotten me into a great deal of trouble and has caused me an unseemly amount of work. Further, it may infect the reader with such an unseemly thing as laughter or it may cause the reader to scowl. In addition, the imbiber may not be able to disgorge it. Too, only an intelligent reader can use it and only the unintelligent will damn it. It may react like a circus band upon one man and "Gloomy Sunday" upon another.
To orient a billion facts and save myself from mental ruin, I originated the organization of a book and reduced all wisdom to one word -- SURVIVE!
