One may ask if it is not conceit to try to be better than others. There are many thorns and few flowers. We should not try to become a flower in order to feel ourselves superior to a thorn, but only for the benefit of others. All that trouble and pain and difficulty should be suffered for others; if among so many thorns we turn into a flower, it should be for others. That must be the idea. Besides it is not an easy task to become a flower; it is far easier to become a thorn; for one is naturally born a thorn and one has to become a flower. It is easy to say, "You have hurt me, insulted me, disturbed me, troubled me." But one does better to ask oneself if one has not harmed or disturbed someone else. One never thinks enough about this. Therefore to develop personality one learns self-effacement. It is an annihilation, a continual unconscious annihilation which turns the self from a thorn into a flower.