In his little gem, A Brief Reader on the Virtues of the Human Heart, the philosopher Josef Pieper recalls a popular saying of the Middle Ages: “A man is wise when all things taste to him as they really are.”8 This sums up why people need to look at reality without deceiving themselves. So long as self-deception is at the source of a person’s perception of things, he or she cannot mature into the fullness of being human or lead a successful course through life.
