A mouse was once riding on the back of an elephant, and the pair went across a rickety bridge. As might be expected, the bridge shook and rattled. When the duo had successfully navigated the bridge, the mouse exclaimed, "My, oh my, we certainly made that bridge shake, didn't we?"

It is all too common an experience to meet people who sound as if they are somehow related to that mouse. People who brag loudly about their successes, their skills, the ways they are crucial to the history of the world, or at least to their own little part of it, even when everyone who knows them suspects rather strongly that these people are really much less than they claim to be.

And even though we would like to think that other people are the ones who act that way, if the truth is told, all of us are certain…