I suppose it is inevitable that every person should drastically over-estimate his or her importance. It is psychologically essential that we live the days of our lives thinking how vital it is that we exist and how much what we labour to achieve and create matters in the world.
And, to be fair, in each of our own little worlds – our close family, our dearest friends, our closest colleagues – we do have an importance and it does matter that we are daily in their midst doing the best we can. In fact that is the best part of what any man or woman does in life.
But for anyone to harbour any illusions that he or she is anything but completely insignificant in the larger scheme of things is laughable. People prominent in public life – politicians in particular, but also a thousand other personalities in the limelight – are particularly prone to absurd delusions about their own grandeur. The pomposity and self-regarding self-importance of most public figures in the world is remarkable and pathetic.
Anyone suffering from an acute attack of self-importance should read a little history and recall how fleeting all fame, almost any endeavour, really is. To cancel out all temporary glory there is the saving irony of time – time which in the end puts all the pretensions of power in perspective.
I like to give the example of the fate of the Sun King’s heart. Louis XIV of France, demi-god of the greatest nation of the time, knew more power and glory in his long life than probably anyone in history. But when he died contemplate the humiliating voyages of his shrivelled heart.
When the great king died his heart was separated from the body, pickled and placed in a jewelled casket where it reposed for most of the 18th century in the royal family monastery at St Denis. When the revolution broke out in 1789 the casket was rescued and carried about in the baggage of
